These are characters of the Arabic alphabet: أبجدية عربية. If instead you see a bunch of little boxes or question marks, then you need to install fonts with the appropriate characters

[edit] Text bidirectionality

The biggest problem for incorporating Arabic language text into the English language Wikipedia is that Arabic flows right-to-left while English flows left-to-right. Worse, the numerals shared by the two languages don't have as strong directionality as the letters, sometimes causing seemingly inexplicable glitches.

This can be fixed by using the Unicode left-to-right mark (LRM) U+200E at the end of the Arabic text to signal that the following English text should be read left to right.

The LRM can be placed using an HTML character identity of either the hexadecimal or decimal value: ‎ or ‎.

In some cases it might be possible to just rephrase or move the text around so that the more strongly directioned text follows the Arabic text. This avoids the need of the LRM altogether.

Arabic script can be incorrectly rendered on a system not supporting Arabic.

The word العربية al-arabiyyah, "the Arabic [language]". From top to bottom: 1. Left-to-right (incorrect); 2. Right-to-left but not joined (incorrect); 3. Right-to-left and joined (correct)

[edit] Transliteration

One suggestion is to give the word written in Arabic the first time it appears in an article, followed immediately by one romanization, then using that romanization consistently through the rest of the article.

Chat Arabic should be avoided.

Unless the article or section is about an Arabic dialect, the pausal (without case endings إﻋﺮﺍﺏ ʾiʿrab) pronunciation of the prestigious Arabic - Modern Standard Arabic الفصحى al-fuṣ-ḥā is preferred over a dialect. If both are used, then standard (if it exists) should be used before the dialectal pronunciation.

E.g. Egypt مصر:

Miṣr - Modern Standard Arabic/Classical Arabic, pause (الوقف al-wakf), preferred.

Miṣru - Modern Standard Arabic/Classical Arabic, nominative case.

Maṣr - Egyptian Arabic.

The case ending may be appropriate when a name uses Iḍāfa إضافة (here: possession). Whenever ʾiʿrab is used, make sure that you drop superfluous auxiliary constructions such as ʾa in the article (ʾa)l-, e.g. عيد الفطر ʿīd al-fiţr or ʿīdu l-fiţr(i).

[edit] See also

• Arabic alphabet
• Arabic phonology
• Bi-directional text
• Romanization of Arabic
• Harakat
• Literary Arabic
• Unicode
• Hindu-Arabic numeral system

[edit] Fonts

• Arabic script
• Abjad

[edit] External links

• Google Ta3reeb - Arabic Keyboard using English Characters
• Yamli Editor - The Smart Arabic Keyboard (with automatic conversions and dictionary for better selections)
• Bidirectional text
• Arabic support on MS Windows Vista