Text Direction

[dalia_6212]

I'm using InDesign for an Arabic book, so I downloaded the Middle East version.

My issue is that a few textboxes have words written backwards and when I delete and try to type the words correctly, they're also written backwards.

Any advice? Thank you.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Are you trying to type "English" words? 

Can you post some screenshots? 

[dalia_6212]

No, I'm trying to write the Arabic words correctly. When I tried to type in English, it works fine.

I could post screenshots, but it won't make sense unless you can read Arabic.

Thank you!

[Peter Spier]

Make sure you have the correct language assigned to the words that are backwards. Language  is a character-level attribute that allows you to mix words from differnt languages in the same paragraph.

[dalia_6212]

Can you tell me how I can do that? Thank you.

[Willi Adelberger]

Has the paragraph style the correct language and direction selection.

Is a character style used which has different settings?

[dalia_6212]

I opened paragraph style. How do I ensure that the settings are correct?

Thank you.

[Willi Adelberger]

Go step by step through all the categories of the style. 

[Peter Spier]

You'll find the Language assignment in the Advanced Character Formats section of the Paragraph Style dialog.

[Peter Spier]

The Arabic version of InDesign also has a setting for Story Direction for right-to-left reading. Not sure where to find that. and also be sure that you have one of the World Ready paragraph composers active rather than the regular composers.

[Joel Cherney]

Here's all of the places in the Paragraph Style that can affect character direction:

The last of those - "Character Direction" ought to be left at "Default". Numbers in Arabic should display left-to-right so it's important to force character direction only in small amounts, and only with character styles or local formatting.

The Story Direction is here, but it shouldn't affect text direction within the frame as far as I know. 

[dalia_6212]

Thank you, Peter!

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @dalia_6212,  

I hope the suggestions from experts helped sort things out with the reversed text issue. If you're still running into trouble, please do share an update.

Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Abhishek 

[dalia_6212]

Hello, Abhishek. I posted a few replies to the kind ppl who got back to me.

I opened paragraph style, but I'm not sure what to do in order to make sure the text stops writing Arabic backwards and nonsensically. 

Thank you.

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @dalia_6212,  

I really appreciate you trying out the steps. Since the issue is still persisting, could you kindly share a short screen recording showing what exactly happens when you try to type in Arabic?  

Looking forward to your update!  

^
Abhishek

[dalia_6212]

Here you go.  The five text boxes in the upper left corner.

Thank you.

[Joel Cherney · Accepted solution]

Those five text frames have left-to-right paragraph direction applied. There are many ways you could resolve that. Does the text in all five of those frames have a paragraph style applied? If so, make sure that it's set up to be right-to-left, and that there are no overrides applied:

That's the best way to handle text in InDesign - everything has a paragraph style, no overrides are applied to the style. But there are quick and dirty methods as well:

Edit: wait a minute here, I should have put on my glasses before responding. Those five text boxes have the World-Ready Composer turned off, I think. That can be turned on in the paragraph style:

or in the flyout menu of the Paragraph panel:

[dalia_6212]

Joel, you're a life saver! Thank you so much.