Text Alignment

CSS Text Alignment and Text Direction

In this chapter you will learn about the following properties:

• text-align
• text-align-last
• vertical-align
• direction
• unicode-bidi

Text Alignment

The text-align property is used to set the horizontal alignment of a text.

This property can have one of the following values:

• left - Aligns the text to the left
• right - Aligns the text to the right
• center - Centers the text
• justify - Stretches the lines so that each line has equal width

The following example shows left, right and center aligned text (left is default if text direction is left-to-right, and right is default if text direction is right-to-left):

Example

h1 {
  text-align: center;
}

h2 {
  text-align: left;
}

h3 {
  text-align: right;

}

When the text-align property is set to "justify", each line is stretched so that every line has equal width, and the left and right margins are straight (like in magazines and newspapers):

Example

div {
  text-align: justify;
}

Text Align Last

The text-align-last property specifies how to align the last line of a text.

This property can have one of the following values:

• auto - Default value. The last line is justified and aligned left
• left - The last line is aligned to the left
• right - The last line is aligned to the right
• center - The last line is center-aligned
• justify - The last line is justified as the rest of the lines
• start - The last line is aligned at the start of the line
• end - The last line is aligned at the end of the line

Example

  p.a
{

text-align-last: right;

}

p.b
{

text-align-last: center;

}

p.c
{

    text-align-last: justify;

}

Vertical Alignment

The vertical-align property sets the vertical alignment of an element.

This property can have one of the following values:

• baseline - Default value. The element is aligned with the baseline of the parent
• length/% - Raises or lower an element by the specified length or percent
• sub - The element is aligned with the subscript baseline of the parent
• super - The element is aligned with the superscript baseline of the parent
• top - The element is aligned with the top of the tallest element on the line
• text-top - The element is aligned with the top of the parent element's font
• middle - The element is placed in the middle of the parent element
• bottom - The element is aligned with the lowest element on the line
• text-bottom - The element is aligned with the bottom of the parent element's font

Example

  img.a {
  vertical-align: baseline;
}

img.b {

  vertical-align: text-top;
}

img.c {
  vertical-align:
  text-bottom;
}

img.d {
  vertical-align: sub;
}

  img.e {
  vertical-align: super;
}

Text Direction

The direction property specifies the text direction/writing direction within a block-level element.

Tip: Use this property together with the unicode-bidi property to set or return whether the text should be overridden to support multiple languages in the same document.

Example

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

The CSS Text Alignment/Direction Properties