The fault surface is usually near vertical and the footwall moves either left or right or laterally with very little vertical motion. Strike-slip faults with left-lateral motion are also known as sinistral faults. Those with right-lateral motion are also known as dextral faults.
A special class or strike-slip faults is the transform fault, which is a plate tectonics feature related to spreading centers such as mid-ocean ridges. Transform faults are often referred to as transform plate boundaries.
