I spent a few seconds at Macy’s housewares department turning dishes around. These dishes had three Chinese characters on them and although I can only recognize about ten characters in Chinese, I do know when something is upside down. But not everyone seems to be able to figure that out. That got me thinking about what characteristics of the language my brain has managed to gather together in order to know when something is upside down when I can’t even read it. It’s not just the brushstrokes; I can spot printed text as well. Can other languages’ “right side up” traits be categorized?