Vertical Text Options

Stay Horizontal for Now

There are some proposed standards for encoding vertical text automatically, but they are very inconsistently supported.

If you need to display text vertically, use a PDF file or an image with horizontal transcript.

Some Standards

Ruby Standard

The RUBY XML standard is a vertical text schema which will allow developers to display vertical text pages on the Web. However, very few browsers except Internet Explorer for Windows properly support vertical text at this time.

RUBY Links

• W3C What is Ruby?
• W3C Ruby Page
• W3C Ruby Tutorial
• W3C Ruby Tests - Compare text with graphic

CSS 3 (In Development)

When CSS 3 is fully implemented, it will include styles for vertical text.

CSS Tag (Internet Explorer 5+/Windows Only)

Internet Explorer for Windows does support a CSS3 style-sheet tag for vertical text, but other browsers render the text horizontally. Go to the links below for details.

• Vertical CSS Test
• Using Vertical Layout in Internet Explorer 5.5 (Microsoft)
• Chinese Computing Com

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Last Modified: Friday, 12-Aug-2011 17:54:32 EDT