text-orientation

The text-orientation CSS property sets the orientation of the text characters in a line. It only affects text in vertical mode (when writing-mode is not horizontal-tb). It is useful for controlling the display of languages that use vertical script, and also for making vertical table headers.

Syntax

/* Keyword values */
text-orientation: mixed;
text-orientation: upright;
text-orientation: sideways-right;
text-orientation: sideways;
text-orientation: use-glyph-orientation;

/* Global values */
text-orientation: inherit;
text-orientation: initial;
text-orientation: initial;
text-orientation: unset;

The text-orientation property is specified as a single keyword from the list below.

Values

mixed: Rotates the characters of horizontal scripts 90° clockwise. Lays out the characters of vertical scripts naturally. Default value.
upright: Lays out the characters of horizontal scripts naturally (upright), as well as the glyphs for vertical scripts. Note that this keyword causes all characters to be considered as left-to-right: the used value of direction is forced to be ltr.
sideways: Causes characters to be laid out as they would be horizontally, but with the whole line rotated 90° clockwise.
sideways-right: An alias to sideways that is kept for compatibility purposes.
use-glyph-orientation: On SVG elements, this keyword leads to use the value of the deprecated SVG properties glyph-orientation-vertical and glyph-orientation-horizontal.

Formal definition

Initial value	`mixed`
Applies to	all elements, except table row groups, rows, column groups, and columns
Inherited	yes
Computed value	as specified
Animation type	discrete

Formal syntax

mixed | upright | sideways

Examples

HTML

<p>Lorem ipsum dolet semper quisquam.</p>

CSS

p {
  writing-mode: vertical-rl;
  text-orientation: upright;
}

Result

Specifications

Specification
CSS Writing Modes Level 4 (CSS Writing Modes 4) # text-orientation

Browser compatibility

	Desktop						Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari	WebView Android	Chrome Android	Firefox for Android	Opera Android	Safari on IOS	Samsung Internet
`text-orientation`	48 11	79 79	41	No	35 15	14 5.1	48 ≤37	48 18	41	35 14	14 5	5.0 1.0
`sideways`	No	No	44 `sideways-right` has become an alias of `sideways`.	No	No	No	No	No	44 `sideways-right` has become an alias of `sideways`.	No	No	No