<bdo>: The Bidirectional Text Override element

The HTML Bidirectional Text Override element (<bdo>) overrides the current directionality of text, so that the text within is rendered in a different direction.

The source for this interactive example is stored in a GitHub repository. If you'd like to contribute to the interactive examples project, please clone https://github.com/mdn/interactive-examples and send us a pull request.

The text's characters are drawn from the starting point in the given direction; the individual characters' orientation is not affected (so characters don't get drawn backward, for example).

Attributes

This element's attributes include the global attributes.

dir

The direction in which text should be rendered in this element's contents. Possible values are:

• ltr: Indicates that the text should go in a left-to-right direction.
• rtl: Indicates that the text should go in a right-to-left direction.

Examples

<!-- Switch text direction -->
<p>This text will go left to right.</p>
<p><bdo dir="rtl">This text will go right
to left.</bdo></p>

Result

Notes

The HTML 4 specification did not specify events for this element; they were added in XHTML. This is most likely an oversight.

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• Related HTML element: <bdi>