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zeitgeistnola
Participant
October 28, 2014
Answered

Arabic character period in the wrong spot?

  • October 28, 2014
  • 6 replies
  • 45097 views

Well this is an annoying problem.  I'm working with a bunch of Arabic text copied from a Word doc and pasted into InDesign CC.  And while the text is flowing in the right direction, the periods insist on winding up on the right margin at the end of the text instead of after the last character in the sentence, at the end of the line to the left.

I've set the character to Adobe Arabic Regular, the text to right justify, the Language under Character to Arabic, and the Paragraphs to Adobe World-Ready Paragraph Composer.

In Googling for solutions, I see instructions to Select the paragraph direction from the Paragraph panel (not an option in my Paragraph panel), choose Character Direction from the Character panel (also not an option), From the Story panel (Window > Type & Tables > Story), click a story direction (not available).  I've also tried adding spacing and hard returns before and after the period character, changing that character to another font and re-placing it, switching to single line vs. paragraph world-ready... nothing is working.

What am I doing wrong/how do I get the periods once and for all in the right spot?

    Correct answer Marvest

    Here's is a trick mentioned by another contributor a few days ago. Create a text frame and then Ctrl +Type/Fill with Placeholder Text. This will let you choose what to fill with. Choose Arabic. Create a new paragraph style and use it where needed.

    6 replies

    C
    Codie
    Participating Frequently
    January 23, 2025

    Here to report that it's January 2025 and the answer marked correct in this thread still works. (and you'd think there would be a better solution 11 years later)

    H
    Haji Khan Keerio
    Participant
    May 11, 2020

    This solution is for html.  What you have to do is just add attribute dir='rtl' in the body or you can add where the issue is. It will change complete layout and all the issues will be fixed by just putting this. 

    T
    TK@OG
    Participant
    January 27, 2020

    This worked for me, but I had to Ctrl + Command and then Fill with place holder for it to work. This is on a Mac platform.

      M
      monaayyoub
      Participant
      January 5, 2022

      Update as of Jan 2022, this still works. Thank you!!!! 

       

        D
        dirk-jan013
        Participant
        November 15, 2016

        Hello!

        I'm doing exactly the same but with the placeholder text I get now Lorem Ipsum...

        If I have a sentence with English text it messes up my layout as you can see below.

        Is there no way that it can work properly? No plug-in? I'm getting quite stressed of this problem at moment.

        Joel Cherney
        Community Expert
        Joel CherneyCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        November 16, 2016

        There are lots of ways to make it work! If you have a subscription to Creative Cloud, you can install the Middle East/North Africa version of InDesign (Arabic/Hebrew toolset with English interface) and then you can get character-level control of direction, insert RTL or LTR parentheses, and so on.

        If you're still using Creative Suite (or if you are using CC and want to work in CJK as well as RTL languages), then you can buy a plugin from in-tools.com that will let you set character-level direction. If you are still using Creative Suite and can't pay anything, there are some free scripts that will let you affect character direction.

        D
        dirk-jan013
        Participant
        November 8, 2016

        Hi guys, I'm trying this as well but I can't edit my text afterwards. Is there a solution for this? It's pasted like an image. I want to give it some colour but I can't like this.

        Marvest
        MarvestCorrect answer
        Inspiring
        October 28, 2014

        Here's is a trick mentioned by another contributor a few days ago. Create a text frame and then Ctrl +Type/Fill with Placeholder Text. This will let you choose what to fill with. Choose Arabic. Create a new paragraph style and use it where needed.

          Z
          zeitgeistnolaAuthor
          Participant
          October 28, 2014

          Thanks Ellis!  I don't know why that worked, but it did -- of course it means re-setting all of the boxes and fonts in my (originally English) document but at this point I'll take that over fighting with the existing boxes for the rest of the day.

          Joel Cherney
          Community Expert
          Joel CherneyCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          October 28, 2014

          You were most likely pasting from a Word document with right-to-left character flow into an InDesign document with paragraph with left-to-right paragraph direction. You mentioned setting your paragraphs to right justify, but RTL paragraph behavior and right-aligned text are two different things. Turning on the WRC and setting language to Arabic will get you most, not all, of the settings you need for correct display. That's why the Middle East edition (the English-Arabic version that Ellis mentions) exists - all of those settings that you see in the Help pages are in that version only.

          (In fact, somewhere on that page, it says that the page only applies to ME versions of the software. I can't recall where it is, but it's conspicuously not in large print at the top of the page.)

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