Arabic justified text – how to control uneven word spacing in individual paragraphs?

Question

Hi everyone,I’m typesetting an Arabic book in InDesign 2026 using the Middle Eastern/Arabic features. The document is RTL and the body text is fully justified.I’m currently using Adwa Al Salaf for the Arabic body text. My paragraph styles use the Adobe paragraph composer and Arabic justification/Kashida settings.I’m having a problem with the visual spacing between words in different paragraphs.Some paragraphs are relatively short, and InDesign creates noticeably large spaces between the Arabic words in order to justify the lines. Another paragraph directly below may be longer and therefore looks much denser. The difference between the two paragraphs can look quite strong on the same page.I would like to know the best professional way to handle this in Arabic book typography.In particular:Can I adjust the word spacing / justification settings for one individual paragraph without changing the paragraph style for all other paragraphs?I have tried the paragraph justification/composer settings, but changing them does not seem to produce the result I expected. I also do not want to manually insert spaces or alter the Arabic text itself.Ideally I want InDesign to keep natural Arabic spacing and use Kashida appropriately, while avoiding very wide gaps in shorter justified paragraphs.I’ll attach a screenshot showing the difference between the paragraphs.Is there a recommended workflow for this in InDesign, especially for Arabic/MENA book typesetting?Thanks!

Joel Cherney · Answer

I suppose that the recommended workflow in InDesign in any language would be to make a paragraph style, give it some justification settings, and then apply that style to your body text. So if you needed to change those values - like Word Spacing - you can change it once, in that paragraph style, and then all the paragraphs that have that style applied all change to match.

Your screenshot looks like the first paragraph has very different justification settings than your second paragraph. If your second paragraph is what you want your text to look like, one approach would be to put your insertion point into the body text, and use the Paragraph Styles panel to create a new paragraph style. That new style is created with the settings (including justification) that are applied to the paragraph where your cursor was when you created the style. You can then click into the first paragraph, then select the paragraph style you just created, and those justification settings will apply to that paragraph.

If none of the above is helpful to you, I’d suggest that you try posting a sample INDD file with the two paragraphs in your screenshot. That way, we can download your file and tell you exactly why your first paragraph is composed in that way - and how to fix it in the future.

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