Adobe Arabic text with English numerals

[glennh3279987]

I design documents for my client in both English and Arabic. When designing the Arabic documents, the numbers automatically default to Arabic. My client would like the numbers in English. What is the most efficient way to make this a global change?

[Derek Cross]

Actually "English" numbers (1, 2, 3, etc) are considered Arabic.

Read all about it: Arabic numerals - Wikipedia

The only other numbering system we (occasionally) use is Roman numerals

[Creamer Training]

I assume your numbers are appearing in an Arabic writing style (ref: Numbers 1-10(١- أقرام ١٠) )

Have you tried using a character style set to the English language? You could also set up a GREP style setting that automatically changes any digits to that character style.

[Derek Cross]

This might make you laugh (or cry!):

Most Americans say ‘Arabic numerals’ should not be taught in school, finds survey | The Independent

[Steve Werner]

How very sad! Shameful ignorance and prejudice! And I'm saying that as an American citizen.

[Derek Cross]

Not to worry, we have a few of them over this side of the pond too Steve.

[Willi Adelberger]

1. Create a character style with the language

"English" (if the font does not contain Western Numbers, you have to choose a font that does contain it.

2. Create a Paragraph Style in the GREP section, select the Character style and apply it to GREP \d+

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Which font are you using in Arabic? You're aware that some fonts may not have Arabic and Hindi numbers, you may check in the Glyphs panel to see if the font has both numbers.

There are fair amount of controls in InDesign to handle multilingual publications such as yours, all you need to do is to fiddle with the settings in Character and Paragraph panels and their fly-out menus. Would be nice to see what settings you're using there.

[TᴀW · Accepted solution]

In the Middle Eastern (ME) version of InDesign, in paragraph style options, under the "Middle East Character Formats", there's a dropdown called Digits. Here you can choose one of four options: Default (whatever the font designer has chosen as the default for that font), Arabic, Hindi or Farsi.

This is where you'd select the style of digits needed. The same options are also available if you select some text and open the flyout menu of the control panel.

Sorry for resuscitating an old thread, but it's still one of the first to come up in Google today (2022).

Ariel