Arabic text displaying bottom to top when over 2 lines, in InDesign 20.5

[Keith22034092uegk]

I'm trying to display some Arabic text in an InDesign document. It's a label which should read:

المنطقة الباردة

However, because the text box wraps over two lines, it's displaying as:
المنطقة

الباردة

As you can see, this is bottom to top, rather than top to bottom. I've also attached a screenshot from within InDesign, showing it incorrect (on two lines) and correct (on one line).

I am using the Adobe World-Ready Paragraph Composer, and character direction is set as Right to Left.

I feel like I've hunted through all the settings, and searched online for an answer, but I can't find it anywhere! Can someone please point me towards what I'm assuming will be a very simple fix!

[Anubhav M]

Hello @Keith22034092uegk,

Thanks for reaching out. Would you mind installing the Arabic/Hebrew version of InDesign (https://adobe.ly/4mwzBHg) (if not done already) to see if it helps resolve the problem?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

[Keith22034092uegk]

Hi @Anubhav M . Thanks for your reply.

I already have the Arabic/Hebrew version installed, as per the instructions you sent, but the issue is still present.

[Joel Cherney · Accepted solution]

Hi Keith! Take a look at my GIF animation where I select your Arabic text as posted, according to logical order. I'm selecting text with the shift key and the arrow keys, to make sure I'm getting the text in the exact order in which it was keyed in:

I've looked at your InDesign file, where you have not marked your paragraph as a right-to-left paragraph, which is absolutely necessary to get Arabic to behave correctly in InDesign. But fixing that major issue isn't going to affect word order - your "المنطقة " is always going to appear before "الباردة" because that's the logical order of the characters. 

Adobe's documentation on handling right-to-left languages in InDesign might be a useful read. 

[Keith22034092uegk]

Hi @Joel Cherney ,

Thanks for that. You're absolutely right. I'd just got mixed up in my head about word order! I knew it was Right to Left, but for some reason missed that mental step when I was working on labels like this. I thought it was displaying incorrectly, when it wasn't.

(Thanks also for the tip about marking the paragraph as right to left - I did have that done correctly on my actual document, but not on this test document).

Nothing to see here, folks, except me making a mistake! Thanks all for your help.