If you don’t think that you can write your message without it being seen, you can try to visualize it in your head instead. While this can be more difficult, it’s best not to be found out by those around you, or your teacher.

Make sure that you’re separating each word in your message, even though they look a little funky and abnormal. If your letters blend together, then the message will be fairly unreadable.

There’s no exact science to the letters and numbers that you choose, so don’t overthink it. “Hello how are you?” would be: “ua3og5ym9 e8lr1sa5h wr3of2ha7 of8lq2lc7ed2ho2”.

After you’ve written your message, hold it up to a mirror. You will see it written in normal English. This is a fairly advanced code and may take some time to master. If you’re left handed, this one might be a bit more difficult to learn, but you can still try writing from right to left and mirroring the letters.

Start to memorize the code, as this will save you time in writing it out in the future. Know that by practicing it, you will grow more comfortable working in the code eventually.

When decoding a message, look at the bottom row of your key and follow to the letter above. The letter above will correlate to the letter in English.

When translating using the half-reversed alphabet, A will equal N, and N will also equal A. It’s a two-way correlation, so some people find will find it easier and quicker to assess when translating.

This code, while fairly simple, is also easy to crack. You could try switching it up by reversing the order of the numbers from the beginning (A=26), or by numbering normally for the first half of the alphabet and reversing your numbers when you hit the half-way point, so that N=26, O=25, and so on.

For advanced coders, there are Morse Code symbols that also represent all forms of punctuation. Try spicing up your messages by writing full sentences, divided by periods, commas, and exclamation points, within your Morse Code.

Write out a key that not only includes the letters of the English alphabet, but also the sounds that have been assigned their own symbol in hieroglyphics. You’ll see that the shared letters often have the same basic design, and that there are small modifications that correlate to each sound or combination of letters.

You can go beyond this single move, however, and slide the alphabet down multiple places. This will make your code more advanced, as a one letter slide can be cracked fairly easily. You can also slide the alphabet backwards. This requires a bit more planning, however, as you’ll have to work from the latter side of the alphabet, move past Z, and then start from A. This strategy is also known as “ROT1,” which stands for “rotate one letter forward. " You can apply this to more advanced scales if you would like. ROT2, for example, would stand for “rotate two letters forward. "

When decoding these messages, write your code words as individual columns again, and you’ll be able read the message in row form again.

Compare the codes for A and J. Both will have the same major shape, but J, because it’s the second grid, gets a dot attached to it. This will apply to all of the shared spaces. The first will be plain, and the second has a dot. It may help to write each letter out individually in its code to compare them with each other.