In 3D geometry, an improper rotation, also called rotoreflection or rotary reflection is, depending on context, a linear transformation or affine transformation which is the combination of a rotation about an axis and a reflection in a plane perpendicular to the axis.Equivalently it is the combination of a rotation and an inversion in a point on the axis. Therefore it is also called a rotoinversion or rotary inversion.In both cases the operations commute. Rotoreflection and rotoinversion are the same if they differ in angle of rotation by 180°, and the point of inversion is in the plane of reflection.An improper rotation of an object thus produces a rotation of its mirror image. The axis is called the rotation-reflection axis. This is called an n-fold improper rotation if the angle of rotation is 360°/n. The notation Sn (S for Spiegel, German for mirror) denotes the symmetry group generated by an n- fold improper rotation. The notation is used for n-fold rotoinversion, i.e. rotation by an angle of rotation of 360°/n with inversion.