ROT14

ROT14 is a Caesar cipher with a fixed shift of 14 applied to the Latin alphabet. It enciphers by moving each letter 14 positions forward, wrapping around at the end of the alphabet. Uppercase and lowercase letters are shifted separately to preserve case, while non-letter characters such as spaces and punctuation are left unchanged. For example, A becomes O, B becomes P, and Z becomes N; similarly, a becomes o and z becomes n.

Decryption is performed by shifting in the opposite direction, effectively a shift of 12 forward (since 26 − 14 = 12). Thus, applying ROT14 twice does not return the original text; one must apply the inverse shift to recover the plaintext.

ROT14 is part of the broader ROT-n family of ciphers, where n denotes the number of positions each letter is shifted. It is a monoalphabetic substitution cipher and shares the same basic weaknesses as other simple Caesar-type ciphers: it is easy to break by brute force (only 26 possible shifts) and by frequency analysis. Because it offers no real cryptographic security, ROT14 is generally used for educational purposes, puzzles, or light obfuscation rather than protecting sensitive information.

Implementation notes often involve iterating over characters, checking for letters, applying the 14-position shift within the respective A–Z or a–z range, and leaving other characters unchanged. Some variations restrict the transformation to ASCII letters only or extend handling to non-Latin characters, depending on the programming context.