How to Use the Palindrome Checker

1. Type or paste a word, phrase, sentence or number into the Enter Text box.
2. Click Check Palindrome.
3. Review the result and the character statistics underneath it.
4. Use Clear All to start again with new text.

What Is a Palindrome?

A palindrome reads the same forwards and backwards once spaces, punctuation and letter case are ignored. This applies to single words as well as full phrases, sentences and numbers.

• racecar
• madam
• level
• Never odd or even
• 12321

How Punctuation, Spacing and Case Are Handled

Only letters and numbers are compared - spaces, commas, apostrophes, exclamation marks and every other symbol are removed before checking, and the comparison itself ignores upper and lower case entirely. That's what allows a sentence like "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!" to be recognised as a palindrome, even though the raw punctuation and spacing are not themselves symmetrical.

Common Uses for Palindrome Checking

Palindrome checking comes up in word puzzles and language games, in programming exercises where detecting a palindrome is a classic practice problem, and simply out of curiosity when a word, name or phrase looks like it might read the same both ways. It's also a quick way to settle a debate about whether a longer phrase genuinely qualifies once punctuation and spacing are set aside.

Word, Phrase and Number Palindromes

Single-word palindromes like LEVEL or MADAM tend to be short by nature - there are only so many words that read the same backwards. Phrase palindromes are more flexible, since spaces and punctuation are ignored, allowing whole sentences to qualify even though no individual word in them is a palindrome on its own. Numeric palindromes work the same way but with digits instead of letters, so a number like 12321 counts exactly like a word would.

Tips

• If you're testing a phrase, don't worry about matching punctuation or spacing exactly - the checker ignores both automatically.
• Check the Characters Checked statistic to see exactly how many letters and numbers were actually compared, once everything else was stripped out.
• A single letter or digit is technically always a palindrome, since it reads the same in either direction.

Frequently Asked Questions