Closing Parentheses Moves to Front of Text Line

[MATTHEW5C2A]

I've encountered a issue recently where any closing marks either a closed parentheses or period moves to the front of the text line.

Example:

How I'd like it to appear |    Is there anything I can do (I can't figure this out)

How it appears in InDesign   |    (Is there anything I can do (I can't figure this out

Please help if you know a solution.

Thank you!

[Joel Cherney]

That looks a lot like your text has been accidentally turned into Arabic, or the right-to-left paragraph behavior button has been checked. If you have a version of InDesign installed that supports Arabic, it's super easy to turn off. Here are screenshots of what my Arabic-enabled Indesign look like in the Paragraph and Character panels:

So, if you don't have those paragraph directional buttons, then 1) I can post a little script to reset the paragraph direction to English default left-to-right behavior, and 2) you've been hit by a bug that causes someone to come in here every month or two asking why their InDesign is acting as if it's set up for Arabic. If you start a brand-new document and see this behavior, you should probably try resetting your InDesign preferences.