text-orientation

Baseline Widely available

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

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.

Try it

writing-mode: vertical-rl;
text-orientation: mixed;

writing-mode: vertical-rl;
text-orientation: upright;

<section class="default-example" id="default-example">
  <div class="transition-all" id="example-element">
    <p>
      In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in
      the world she was to get out again.
    </p>
  </div>
</section>

Syntax

css

/* 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: revert;
text-orientation: revert-layer;
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	Not animatable

Formal syntax

text-orientation = 
  mixed     |
  upright   |
  sideways

Examples

HTML

html

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

CSS

css

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

Result

Specifications

Specification
CSS Writing Modes Level 4 # text-orientation

Browser compatibility

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This page was last modified on ⁨Oct 30, 2025⁩ by MDN contributors.

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