Arabic typography

Design of type in the Arabic alphabet

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish.  (March 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions.

*   * Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
* Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,074 articles in the main category, and specifying`|topic=` will aid in categorization.
* Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
* You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is `Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Tipografía árabe]]; see its history for attribution.`
* You may also add the template `{{Translated|es|Tipografía árabe}}` to the talk page.
* For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

|

Arabic typography is the typography of letters, graphemes, characters or text in Arabic script, for example for writing Arabic, Persian, or Urdu. 16th century Arabic typography was a by-product of Latin typography with Syriac and Latin proportions and aesthetics. It lacked expertise in the three core aspects of Arabic writing: calligraphy, style and system. Calligraphy requires aesthetically skilled writing in a chosen canonical style such as naskh, nastaʿlīq or ruqʿah. System denotes the script grammar covering such rules as horizontality and stretching.[1]

## Characteristics

[edit]

Some characteristics used in Latin scripts, like bold, letter spacing[dubious - discuss] or italic, are not usually used in Arabic typography.

### Calligraphic style

[edit]

Some Arabic computer fonts are calligraphic, for example Arial, Courier New, and Times New Roman. They look as if they were written with a brush or oblong pen, akin to how serifs originated in stone inscriptionals. Other fonts, like Tahoma and Noto Sans Arabic, use a mono-linear style more akin to sans-serif Latin scripts. Monolinear means that the lines have the same width throughout the letter.

This design of this table assumes that the reader has the computer fonts Arial and Tahoma installed; as the latter is proprietary to Microsoft, that assumption may not be true, font substitution will occur. and the table will not be displayed as intended.

Text example  | Calligraphic (Arial)  | Monolinear (Tahoma)

|
|

Eastern Arabic numerals | ٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩ | ٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩
Abjad Hawz (ابجد هوز [arz]), an Arabic alphabet song | ابجد هوز حطي كلمن

شكل الاستاذ بقى منسجمن

استاذ حمام .. نحن الزغاليل

| ابجد هوز حطي كلمن

شكل الاستاذ بقى منسجمن

استاذ حمام .. نحن الزغاليل

### Overlines

[edit]

Overlines used in a version of the Bible in Persian (1920)

Historically, Arabic text used overlines to indicate emphasis.[2]

### Slant (italic)

[edit]

Some Arabic styles such as Diwani use a right-to-left downward-sloping slant.[3]

### Use of right angles

[edit]

Some typefaces use more right angles, for example Noto Kufi Arabic. Others, like Tahoma and Arial, have a more rounded style (see graph below). A font with tendency towards right angles is also called 'angled',[4] and rounded fonts are also called 'cursive'.[5]

## See also

[edit]

* Arabic calligraphy
* Naskh (script)
* Typeface anatomy
* Digital Arabic typography [ar] (on ar.wikipedia)

* Category:Iranian typographers and type designers
* Category:Arabic typefaces

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Thomas Milo, Arabic Typography, Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Brill Publishers, 2013
2. ^ Charette, François (2010). "ArabXeTeX: an ArabTeX-like interface for typesetting languages in Arabic script with XeLaTeX" (PDF). p. 5\. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-04-25. Retrieved 2011-10-10.
3. ^ "TPTQ Arabic: Arabic Calligraphy and Type Design by Kristyan Sarkis". tptq-arabic.com. Archived from the original on 2022-01-29. Retrieved 2020-09-02.
4. ^ Zoghbi, Pascal (2019-03-14). "29LT Zarid Slab : A Firm & Agile Typeface". 29LT BLOG. Archived from the original on 2020-09-22. Retrieved 2020-09-02.
5. ^ Zoghbi, Pascal (2019-03-14). "29LT Zarid Slab : A Firm & Agile Typeface". 29LT BLOG. Archived from the original on 2020-09-22. Retrieved 2020-09-02.

### Further reading

[edit]

* "Text Layout Requirements for the Arabic Script". w3c.github.io.

* v
* t
* e

Typography

Page|

* Canons of page construction
* Column
* Even working
* Margin
* Page numbering
* Paper size
* Pagination
* Pull quote
* Recto and verso
* Intentionally blank page

Paragraph|

* Alignment
* Leading
* Line length
* River
* Runaround
* Widows and orphans
* runt

Character|

| Typeface anatomy|

* Counter
* Diacritics
* Dingbat
* Glyph
* Ink trap
* Ligature
* Rotation
* Subscript and superscript
* Swash
* Text figures
* Tittle

|

Capitalization|

* All caps
* Camel case
* Initial
* Letter case
* Small caps
* Snake case
* Title case

Visual distinction|

* Blackboard bold
* Bold
* Color printing
* Italics
* Oblique
* Underline
* Whitespace

Horizontal aspects|

* Figure space
* Kerning
* Letter spacing
* Pitch
* Sentence spacing
* Thin space
* Word spacing

Vertical aspects|

* Ascender
* Baseline
* Body height
* Cap height
* Descender
* Mean line
* Overshoot
* x-height

Typeface
classifications|

| Roman type|

* Serif
* Antiqua
* Didone
* slab serif
* Sans-serif

|

Blackletter type|

* Fraktur
* Rotunda
* Schwabacher

Gaelic type|

* Insular
* Uncial

Specialist|

* Record type
* Display typeface
* script
* fat face
* reverse-contrast

Punctuation (List)|

* Bullet
* Dash
* Hanging punctuation
* Hyphen
* minus sign
* Interpunct
* Space
* Vertical bar

Typesetting|

* Etaoin shrdlu
* Font
* computer
* monospaced
* Font catalog
* For position only
* Letterpress
* Lorem ipsum
* Microprinting
* Microtypography
* Movable type
* Pangram
* Phototypesetting
* Punchcutting
* Reversing type
* Sort
* Type color
* Type design
* Typeface
* list

Typographic units|

* Agate
* Cicero
* Em
* En
* Metric units
* Pica
* Point
* traditional point-size names
* Twip

Digital typography|

* Character encoding
* Hinting
* Text shaping
* Rasterization
* Typographic features
* Web typography
* Bézier curves
* Desktop publishing

Typography in other
writing systems|

* Arabic
* Cyrillic
* PT Fonts
* East Asian
* Thai
* National Fonts

Related articles|

* Penmanship
* Handwriting
* Handwriting script
* Calligraphy
* Style guide
* Type design
* Type foundry
* History of Western typography
* Intellectual property protection of typefaces
* Technical lettering
* Vox-ATypI classification

Related template|

* Punctuation and other typographic symbols

* Category

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template