<bdo>: The Bidirectional Text Override element

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

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).

Content categories	Flow content, phrasing content, palpable content.
Permitted content	Phrasing content.
Tag omission	None, both the starting and ending tag are mandatory.
Permitted parents	Any element that accepts phrasing content.
Implicit ARIA role	No corresponding role
Permitted ARIA roles	Any
DOM interface	`HTMLElement` Up to Gecko 1.9.2 (Firefox 4) inclusive, Firefox implements the `HTMLSpanElement` interface for this element.

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

Specification
HTML Standard (HTML) # the-bdo-element

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser