Producing Reflections and Rotations in Word: 4.5
The word-processing package Microsoft Word includes some simple drawing tools that allow an exploration of reflection and rotation.
In order to apply one of the transformations, you need to select an object by clicking on it. If you have a complicated shape that you have made out of simpler shapes, and you want to reflect or rotate the whole picture, make sure you use the "Group" command to lock all the pieces together before applying the transformation.
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Reflecting The Draw icon in the drawing toolbar of Word produces a number of formatting options for shapes that have been created. One of these is Rotate or Flip (see screen dump at right).
Word only allows vertical and horizontal reflection lines, so reflecting about sloping reflection lines is not directly possible. More sophisticated computer illustration software, such as Illustrator, will allow you to define a sloping mirror line. Rotating by 90° The same place in the menu allows you to choose to rotate the selected shape to the left or the right by 90° (using Rotate Left and Rotate Right respectively).
Other rotations
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Rotating by an exact amount To specify the exact angle for rotating a shape, use the Format AutoShape or Format Picture dialogue box, obtained from the Format menu in Word. Here there is an option for specifying the angle of rotation. Positive angles are in the clockwise direction. (Warning note: In Word, this rotation is taken from the shape's original position. This means that if the shape has already undergone a transformation to get it into its current position, then the result of another rotation may not be as expected. More sophisticated, dedicated illustration packages will avoid this problem. This glitch has implications for considering the composition of transformations, so that a reflection followed by a rotation done in Word will not give the correct answer, although rotations followed by reflections will be okay.) |
