Back when Taxi started out (nearly 5 years ago, can you believe it?), one of our very first customers needed our help supporting different language formatting in their emails. They had Middle Eastern audiences and therefore needed to have emails in a right to left (RTL) format as well as left to right (LTR). Considerations for copy as well as layout are needed as not every language will display the same. For example, punctuation and numbers/symbols can format differently for each language.

Different formats can pose design challenges, especially when building out a template, as changes might need to be made to the HTML for your emails to render the way you need. These challenges have the possibility of creating a lengthly email and QA process as sending emails in multiple languages can be tricky (yes, we said it!).

But we are solution focused! We fully support RTL emails, which expands beyond the initial text layout and includes punctuation, numbers and design formatting. The biggest win for customers is that they are able to create and send emails in any language without needing to have any code knowledge!

Additionally, we are all about collaborative working. Which is why we have 'version sets' in Taxi. If you have a set of language you always send in, this would become a 'version set' which would automatically be created every time you set-up an email. For each version you can assign a template with the correct format, rather than having to go in and change the code each time. All you need to do is go in and edit the content, and then it's good to go!

We've listed some key areas for email developers to check/keep in mind to ensure your HTML works in right to left format. Plus, just for you, we've listed how you can make these areas work in your Taxi templates!

Things to consider for RTL formatting:

• There can be inconsistencies in how RTL behaves between a computer/device with the language set to LTR, and one with Arabic/Hebrew systems. (note: these often don't occur on a "native" language device but it is worth checking)
• RTL language will also impact the design of your emails e.g. images will appear on the right instead of the left. This can have a knock-on impact on how your emails will render on mobile devices.
• The order in which content/columns are coded for desktop might conflict with the order in which you'd like to stack for mobile
• Adding language tags to container elements might cause inheritance issues for different email clients

Taxi top tips:

• Using Taxi, you can insert reverse-stacking responsive code where needed, to ensure your emails on mobile devices render the way you want. This means more control over your email design and less time going back and changing bits of code during the email build.
• To ensure your RTL emails render correctly you can add lang=ar (ar for arabic, he for hebrew) and dir=rtl to every td that will contain content
• Taxi recommend two options for your template. The first is having a separate HTML template for RTL. Why? To make it easier to maintain and control (templates which format for both can become code heavy so if your template is already big, we suggest splitting them up). The second option is to keep your code in one Master Template and use sub-templates for each formatting option.
• Taxi's version set feature enables you to automatically set versions for every language you send in. You can have your RTL template automatically assigned to the correct language version without having to set it each time you create an email.

Want to know more?

Chat to a member of our team to find out how we can help you!

Additional information on RTL can be found here.