Arabic Letters Disconnected or Reversed? Why It Happens and How to Fix It
Arabic letters come out disconnected when a program skips "shaping": choosing each letter's form for its place in the word (start, middle, end or alone) and joining them. They come out reversed when the program does not know Arabic runs right to left. The fix is to turn on the program's Arabic support if it has any, or to type the text in a tool that supports it and bring the result across. Arabic that appears as symbols such as "العربية" is a different problem altogether, the file's encoding, and takes a minute to fix. This article covers each case, where you meet it, and what to do.
Why do the letters come apart?
A computer stores each Arabic letter once: "ع" is the same character in عين, سعيد and سمع. When the text is displayed, the program has to pick the right shape for each position and join the letters. Software that was not built for Arabic leaves that step out and draws every letter in its stand-alone form, so عربي appears as ع ر ب ي.
Reversal is a separate step. A program that does not know the direction lays the letters out left to right, so the word reads backwards. That is why some programs show letters both separated and reversed, while others join them correctly but put words in the wrong order when Arabic is mixed with numbers or English.
Where it happens, and the fix
| Where | What you see | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Filling in a PDF with Adobe Acrobat's Fill & Sign | Separated letters | A long-standing issue on the desktop version with no announced fix at the time of writing. Type the text with a tool that joins Arabic, such as Sign PDF (Add text), or use the form's own fields if it has them |
| Photoshop | Separated or reversed letters | Turn on the Middle Eastern text engine (steps below) |
| Older or simple design and video apps | Separated and reversed | Look for right-to-left support in the language settings; if there is none, make the text as an image in a tool that supports Arabic and place that |
| A CSV opened in Excel | Symbols like "ال..." | Encoding, not shaping: use Data, From Text/CSV, and choose UTF-8 as the file origin |
| A film subtitle (SRT) in VLC or on a TV | Strange symbols | The file uses the old Windows-1256 encoding: in VLC, set Tools, Preferences, Subtitles, Default encoding to "Arabic (Windows-1256)" |
| Empty boxes "□□□" | The font has no Arabic letters | Choose a font that includes Arabic, such as Arial, Tahoma or Noto Naskh Arabic |
Photoshop, step by step
Current versions of Photoshop support Arabic fully, but it is not always switched on:
- Open Edit, Preferences, Type on Windows, or Photoshop, Preferences, Type on a Mac (called Settings in some recent versions).
- Choose Middle Eastern and South Asian under the text engine options, then restart Photoshop.
- Create a new text layer: layers written before the change can stay on the old engine, so retype them.
- In the Paragraph panel, set the direction to right-to-left and use an Arabic font.
Menu names shift a little between versions, but the option is there in recent ones. Very old versions (such as non-Middle-East CS6) only had Arabic in a separate edition.
PDFs: why some tools cannot write Arabic
Many PDF tools, online and on the desktop, write text with the old standard PDF fonts (such as Helvetica), which contain no Arabic letters, or place the text without shaping it. The result is either separated letters or an error that stops the file being saved.
Tools that run in the browser can get round this, because the browser itself draws Arabic joined and in the right direction. Sign PDF places a name, a date or any Arabic text joined, exactly as you see it on screen; so do Add Watermark to PDF and the header and footer of HTML to PDF. In these tools Arabic text goes into the PDF as a picture of what you see, so it looks right in every PDF reader, but it cannot be selected or searched as text.
For images and video, Add Text to Image, Add Watermark to Image and Add Text to Video write Arabic joined as well.
What about "Arabic text for Photoshop" converter sites?
These sites convert text into the joined letter shapes and reverse their order, so it looks right in a program that does not support Arabic. That is an acceptable stopgap for a short heading in a design, but it has a cost: the result is no longer real Arabic words, so it cannot be searched or copied properly, and it breaks when the text runs over several lines or is edited later. Use one only when the program has no real Arabic support.
Quick answers
I typed my name in Arabic on a PDF form and it looked fine, but the recipient saw it disconnected. Why? Some programs display text correctly on your device because your fonts support it, and then it looks different elsewhere because the font was not embedded in the file. Write the text with a tool that puts it into the file itself, then open the result in a different reader to check.
Why do numbers or English words jump around inside an Arabic sentence? That is the direction algorithm for mixed text, not shaping. Put the number or English word on its own line if you can, or rephrase so the sentence does not start or end with it.
Is the font the problem? Rarely. An Arabic font is needed for the letters to appear at all (otherwise you see boxes), but it does not join letters or fix the direction; that is the program's job.
What to do next
To fill in or sign a PDF form in Arabic, use Sign PDF and type with Add text, then open the result to check it. If the file then has to go by email or to a portal with a size limit, see Email attachment too big?.
Try the tool
Sign a PDF with your own signature: upload a photo of it (the paper background is removed) or draw it, then place it, plus an optional date or initials, anywhere on any page. Nothing is uploaded.
Open Sign PDF →