writing-mode

The writing-mode property defines whether lines of text are laid out horizontally or vertically and the direction in which blocks progress.

The property specifies the block flow direction, which is the direction in which block-level containers are stacked, and the direction in which inline-level content flows within a block container. Thus the writing-mode property also determines the ordering of block-level content.

Initial value	horizontal-tb
Applies to	all elements except table row groups, table column groups, table rows, and table columns
Inherited	yes
Media	visual
Computed value	as specified
Animation type	discrete
Canonical order	the unique non-ambiguous order defined by the formal grammar

Syntax

/* Keyword values */
writing-mode: horizontal-tb;
writing-mode: vertical-rl;
writing-mode: vertical-lr;

/* Global values */
writing-mode: inherit;
writing-mode: initial;
writing-mode: unset;

Values

horizontal-tb

Content flows horizontally from left to right, vertically from top to bottom. The next horizontal line is positioned below the previous line.

vertical-rl

Content flows vertically from top to bottom, horizontally from right to left. The next vertical line is positioned to the left of the previous line.

vertical-lr

Content flows vertically from top to bottom, horizontally from left to right. The next vertical line is positioned to the right of the previous line.

sideways-rl

Content flows vertically from top to bottom and all the glyphs, even those in vertical scripts, are set sideways toward the right.

sideways-lr

Content flows vertically from top to bottom and all the glyphs, even those in vertical scripts, are set sideways toward the left.

lr

Deprecated except for SVG1 documents. For CSS, use horizontal-tb.

lr-tb

Deprecated except for SVG1 documents. For CSS, use horizontal-tb.

rl

Deprecated except for SVG1 documents. For CSS, use horizontal-tb.

tb

Deprecated except for SVG1 documents. For CSS, use vertical-lr.

tb-rl

Deprecated except for SVG1 documents. For CSS, use vertical-rl.

Formal syntax

horizontal-tb | vertical-rl | vertical-lr | sideways-rl | sideways-lr

Example

Actual result

Specification

Specification	Status	Comment
CSS Writing Modes Module Level 3 The definition of 'writing-mode' in that specification.	Candidate Recommendation	Initial definition

Browser compatibility

[1] An experimental implementation was available since Gecko 36. It is governed by the preference layout.css.vertical-text.enabled, defaulting to false until Firefox 38. From Firefox 39 and Firefox 40, the preference was true for Nightly and DevTools editions only. Note that not all CSS widgets (e.g. tables) obey to it, yet. The preference has been removed in Gecko 51 and this property cannot be disabled since this version.

[2] The implementation in Internet Explorer differs from the specification. See the related article in the Internet Explorer Dev Center.

[3] Bidirectional and rtl scripts are supported in vertical modes only since Gecko 42.

See also

• SVG writing-mode attribute
• direction
• unicode-bidi
• text-orientation
• text-combine-upright