The i18n attributes help in the internationalization of the web by letting a developer specify language and text direction (left-to-right or right-to-left) of an element and its text.

Related elements:

lang attribute:

All elements but BASE, BR, FRAME, FRAMESET, IFRAME, PARAM, SCRIPT

dir attribute:

All elements but BASE, BR, FRAME, FRAMESET, IFRAME, PARAM, SCRIPT

Attribute characteristics and purpose:

lang attribute:

  • helps browsers and search engines in various ways (better detection of cultural practices), helps speech synthesizers, helps spelling and grammar checkers, etc...

dir attribute:

  • specifies the direction of the text
  • in combination with the <bdo> element dir attribute is required while all other usage is implied
  • direction is inherited and may be overridden
  • possible values are "ltr" and "rtl"; default value is "ltr" (left-to-right)

Example

HTML i18n attributes:

 

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