Reversing Text

Chris Coyier on

For right-to-left languages, you can swap the default left-to-right layout in most browsers simply through the dir attribute.

<body dir="rtl"> text in right-to-left language </body>

You can use that attribute on any text element, it doesn’t have to be the body. Likewise, you can swap it with just CSS:

body { unicode-bidi:bidi-override; direction:rtl; }

The following are “less practical” but still interesting:

/* Flip each letter backwards */ div { -webkit-transform:rotateY(180deg); -moz-transform:rotateY(180deg); -o-transform:rotateY(180deg); -ms-transform:rotateY(180deg); unicode-bidi:bidi-override; direction:rtl; }
/* Entire text flipped around */ div { -webkit-transform:rotateY(180deg); -moz-transform:rotateY(180deg); -o-transform:rotateY(180deg); -ms-transform:rotateY(180deg); }