Typography

Member lesson

Arabic type and calligraphy

Lesson 27 of 34 in Typography.

The Politics of Arabic Type Design | Nadine Chahine | TEDxUAL · TEDx Talks
Lesson

Arabic script is written right to left and is inherently cursive: letters connect, and most take different shapes at the beginning, middle and end of a word, or standing alone. That is simply how the script works, and no style opts out of it.

latinbaseline sitsunderdevanagarihangs from theshirorekhaarabicruns along thebaseline, right tolefta shared baseline is a Latin assumption
Latin, Devanagari and Arabic aligned to different reference lines.
A calligrapher's hand with a reed pen drawing a flowing ink stroke from right to left, with a small column of diamond-shaped dots at the margin.
A calligrapher's hand draws one joined, flowing stroke from right to left with a cut reed pen. Arabic letters join and change shape by position, which type has long struggled to match.
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  1. Question 1, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Arabic letters join. There is no non-joined form of ordinary text.”

    • Cursive by nature
    • Readability
    • cpl
    • River
  2. Question 2, locked

    Which of these words means this? “A letter changes shape depending on where it sits in a word.”

    • Positional forms
    • Em
    • Point
    • Outline font
  3. Question 3, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Two of the major styles. Naskh is the everyday text hand; Kufic is angular and monumental.”

    • Script harmonisation
    • Naskh and Kufic
    • Abugida
    • Kana and Hangul

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