This is essentially solved enough for me ... while not actually rotating either type of control, the code Bugfix supplied allowed me to do what I ultimately wanted. See Posts #3 & #9 below. I've just done a mostly fruitless search, where only a GDI+ topic about angled text came close to what I want. I haven't taken that topic apart yet, but thought while I was here, I might as well ask for help or advice. I did searches on text direction, angled text, label angle, rotate label & rotate