<bdi>

Summary

The HTML <bdi> Element (or Bi-Directional Isolation Element) isolates a span of text that might be formatted in a different direction from other text outside it.

This element is useful when embedding text with an unknown directionality, from a database for example, inside text with a fixed directionality.

Though the same visual effect can be achieve using the CSS rule unicode-bidi: isolate on a <span> or another text-formatting element, the semantic meaning is only conveyed by the <bdi> element. Especially, browsers are allowed to ignore CSS styling. In such a case, the text would still be correctly displayed using the HTML element, but will become garbage when using the CSS styling to convey semantic.

• Content categories Flow content, phrasing content, palpable content.
• Permitted contentPhrasing content.
• Tag omission None, both the starting and ending tag are mandatory.
• Permitted parent elements Any element that accepts phrasing content.
• DOM interface HTMLElement

Attributes

Like all other HTML elements, this element has the global attributes, with a slight semantic difference: the dir attribute is not inherited. If not set, its default value is the auto which let the browser decide the direction based on the element's content.

Example

<p dir="ltr">This arabic word <bdi>ARABIC_PLACEHOLDER</bdi> is automatically displayed rigth-to-left.</p>

Result

This arabic word REDLOHECALP_CIBARA is automatically displayed right-to-left.

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
HTML	Living standard
HTML5	Candidate Recommendation

Browser compatibility

See also

• Related HTML element: <bdo>
• Related HTML properties: direction, unicode-bidi