Composition and spacing between letters, words and lines in Arabic Typefaces _____________________

  In Arabic-Persian, words are the smallest unit in a sentence, and letters are attached in most of the cases and sometimes diverge. All Persian letters have the ability to connect to their previous letters from the right side unless there are grammatical rules. This creates a gap between the words in the text. This gap between the letters or the words creates white spaces in the text. In Persian texts, there are three main categories for spacing: 1. letter spacing, 2. word spacing, and 3. leading.

1. Letter spacing:

The spacing between the letters is an essential element in maintaining the beauty and readability of the text. The distance between letters is approximately equal to a font unit thickness in order to enhance the readability and fluency of Persian letters. Decreasing letter spacing will cause reading difficulties.

Figure 1: Displays the space between the letters in the Nasta’liq script (the first line) and the Naskh script (the second line), which is equal to the size of the maximum thickness of the pen.

Figure 2: Displays the space between the letters in the two different Arabic-Persian fonts.

2. Word spacing: 

The beginning of a word should be attended to by an appropriate distance from the end of the previous word. This results in a balance between the black (ink) and white (paper) and helps balance the grey space created. In Persian fonts, this distance is equal to four units of font thickness.

Figure 3: Displays the space between the words in the two different Arabic-Persian fonts.

3. Leading: 

This term describes the distance between each line of text. In print, this amount is normally 140% between the top and bottom baselines. On the other hand, as the number of characters increases in a line, leading also increases

References    _____________________________________________________________

Fozouni, Farhad. 2010. “An Introduction to Persian Gynecology”, Dabire 1: 112.
Veruschka, Gots. 1998. Color and type for the screen, published by Roro Vision SA

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