direction

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since January 2020.

Warning: Where possible, authors are encouraged to avoid using the direction CSS property and use the HTML dir global attribute instead.

The direction CSS property sets the direction of text, table columns, and horizontal overflow. Use rtl for languages written from right to left (like Hebrew or Arabic), and ltr for those written from left to right (like English and most other languages).

Try it

Note that text direction is usually defined within a document (e.g., with HTML's dir attribute) rather than through direct use of the direction property.

The property sets the base text direction of block-level elements and the direction of embeddings created by the unicode-bidi property. It also sets the default alignment of text, block-level elements, and the direction that cells flow within a table row.

Unlike the dir attribute in HTML, the direction property is not inherited from table columns into table cells, since CSS inheritance follows the document tree, and table cells are inside of rows but not inside of columns.

The direction and unicode-bidi properties are the two only properties which are not affected by the all shorthand property.

Syntax

css

/* Keyword values */
direction: ltr;
direction: rtl;

/* Global values */
direction: inherit;
direction: initial;
direction: revert;
direction: revert-layer;
direction: unset;

Values

ltr: Text and other elements go from left to right. This is the default value.
rtl: Text and other elements go from right to left.

For the direction property to have any effect on inline-level elements, the unicode-bidi property's value must be embed or override.

Formal definition

Initial value	`ltr`
Applies to	all elements
Inherited	yes
Computed value	as specified
Animation type	Not animatable

Formal syntax

direction = 
  ltr  |
  rtl

Examples

Setting right-to-left direction

In the example below are two strings of text, both which are displaying using direction: rtl. While the Arabic text is displayed correctly with this setting, the English text now has a full stop in an unusual location.

css

blockquote {
  direction: rtl;
  width: 300px;
}

html

<blockquote>
  <p>This paragraph is in English but incorrectly goes right to left.</p>
  <p></p>
</blockquote>

<blockquote>
  <p>هذه الفقرة باللغة العربية ، لذا يجب الانتقال من اليمين إلى اليسار.</p>
  <p></p>
</blockquote>

Specifications

Specification
CSS Writing Modes Level 4 # direction

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser