w:textDirection (Text Flow Direction)

Specifies the direction of text flow within a table cell or section, supporting horizontal, vertical, and bidirectional layouts.

Parent elements

Description

w:textDirection controls the direction in which text flows within a table cell or section. It enables vertical text orientations used in East Asian typography and other specialized layouts.

It is defined in:

§17.4.81 for the table cell context (w:tcPr).
§17.6.28 for the section context (w:sectPr).

Attributes

Attribute	Type	Possible Values	Description
`w:val`	`ST_TextDirection`	See below	Text flow direction.

Values

Value	Description
`lr`	Left-to-right, top-to-bottom (default).
`rl`	Right-to-left, top-to-bottom.
`tbRl`	Top-to-bottom, right-to-left (vertical CJK).
`btLr`	Bottom-to-top, left-to-right (rotated 90° CCW).
`lrV`	Left-to-right, top-to-bottom with vertical characters.
`rlV`	Right-to-left, top-to-bottom with vertical characters.
`tbLrV`	Top-to-bottom, left-to-right with vertical characters.

Examples

<!-- Vertical text in a table cell (common for row headers) -->
<w:tc>
  <w:tcPr>
    <w:textDirection w:val="tbRl"/>
    <w:vAlign w:val="center"/>
  </w:tcPr>
  <w:p><w:r><w:t>Vertical header</w:t></w:r></w:p>
</w:tc>

using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Wordprocessing;

var tcPr = new TableCellProperties(
    new TextDirection { Val = TextDirectionValues.TopToBottomRightToLeft },
    new TableCellVerticalAlignment { Val = TableVerticalAlignmentValues.Center }
);

Notes

tbRl (top-to-bottom, right-to-left) is the most common vertical text direction for CJK column headers.
When w:textDirection is applied to a cell, the cell’s width and height roles are effectively swapped — width becomes the line length and height becomes the flow length.
Support for all values varies across renderers; lr, rl, and tbRl are the most widely supported.