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Arabic typography

Design of type in the Arabic alphabet

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Arabic typography is the typographyofletters, 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, nastaʿlīqorruqʿah. 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]}oritalic, 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.

Overlines[edit]

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]

Further reading[edit]

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