direction

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The direction attribute specifies the inline-base direction of a <text> or <tspan> element. It defines the start and end points of a line of text as used by the text-anchor and inline-size properties. It also may affect the direction in which characters are positioned if the unicode-bidi property's value is either embed or bidi-override.

It applies only to glyphs oriented perpendicular to the inline-base 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-base direction.

In many cases, the bidirectional Unicode algorithm produces the desired result automatically, so this attribute doesn't need to be specified in those cases. For other cases, such as when using right-to-left languages, it may be sufficient to add the direction attribute to the outermost <svg> element, and allow that direction to inherit to all text elements:

Note: As a presentation attribute, direction also has a CSS property counterpart: direction. When both are specified, the CSS property takes priority.

You can use this attribute with the following SVG elements:

Example

html
<svg
  viewBox="0 0 600 72"
  xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
  direction="rtl"
  lang="fa">
  <text x="300" y="50" text-anchor="middle" font-size="36">
    داستان SVG 1.1 SE طولا ني است.
  </text>
</svg>

Usage notes

Value ltr | rtl
Default value ltr
Animatable Yes

Specifications

Specification
CSS Writing Modes Level 4
# direction
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 2
# DirectionProperty

Browser compatibility

desktop mobile
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
direction
Chrome – Full support
Chrome 2 (Release date: 2009-05-21)
footnote Full support
Edge – Full support
Edge 12 (Release date: 2015-07-29)
footnote Full support
Firefox – Full support
Firefox 1 (Release date: 2004-11-09)
footnote Full support
Opera – Full support
Opera 9.2 (Release date: 2007-04-11)
footnote Full support
Safari – Full support
Safari 1 (Release date: 2003-06-23)
footnote Full support
Chrome Android – Full support
Chrome Android 18 (Release date: 2012-06-27)
footnote Full support
Firefox for Android – Full support
Firefox for Android 4 (Release date: 2011-03-29)
footnote Full support
Opera Android – Full support
Opera Android 10.1 (Release date: 2010-11-09)
footnote Full support
Safari on iOS – Full support
Safari on iOS 1 (Release date: 2007-06-29)
footnote Full support
Samsung Internet – Full support
Samsung Internet 1 (Release date: 2013-04-27)
footnote Full support
WebView Android – Full support
WebView Android 4.4 (Release date: 2013-12-09)
footnote Full support
WebView on iOS – Full support
WebView on iOS 1 (Release date: 2007-06-29)
footnote Full support

Legend

Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.

Full support
Full support

See also