direction

The direction attribute specifies the base writing direction of text and the direction of embeddings and overrides (see unicode-bidi) for the Unicode bidirectional algorithm. For the direction attribute to have any effect on an element that does not by itself establish a new text chunk (such as a <tspan> element without absolute position adjustments due to x or y attributes), the unicode-bidi property's value must be embed or bidi-override.

The direction attribute applies only to glyphs oriented perpendicular to the inline-progression-direction, which includes the usual case of horizontally-oriented Latin or Arabic text and the case of narrow-cell Latin or Arabic characters rotated 90 degrees clockwise relative to a top-to-bottom inline-progression-direction.

As a presentation attribute, it also can be used as a property directly inside a CSS stylesheet, see css direction for further information.

Usage context

Example

Elements

The following elements can use the direction attribute

• Text content elements »

Browser compatibilityUpdate compatibility data on GitHub

See also

• css direction