How to Set Up InDesign for Arabic and Hebrew

Most InDesign workflows assume left-to-right text: lines start on the left, pages bind on the left and page one sits on the right of a spread. Arabic and Hebrew reverse all three. An English file needs specific changes before RTL text goes in, and when nobody makes them, the translated file comes back with broken lines, misplaced punctuation and pages in the wrong order.

This article covers the settings you need: which InDesign install to use, how to set up an RTL document, how paragraph styles handle direction, and what to check when a translated file comes back broken. It focuses on Arabic and Hebrew. Farsi and Urdu use the same settings, with the differences noted below.

First: you need the right InDesign install

RTL features depend on how InDesign is installed. Since CS4, every install includes the Adobe World-Ready Paragraph Composer, which joins Arabic letters. The rest of the Middle Eastern features (right-to-left binding, story direction and kashida justification) come only with an install in a Middle Eastern language option, such as English with Arabic support or English with Hebrew support, chosen in the Creative Cloud desktop app.

To check which install you have, open File → Document Setup. If there is no binding option, the install has no Middle Eastern features.

What's different about an RTL script?

Before changing any settings, it helps to know what InDesign has to do differently for Arabic and Hebrew compared with Latin.

Hebrew letters don't connect, so its shaping is simpler. All four scripts still need the Adobe World-Ready Paragraph Composer: it handles letter joining, ligatures and contextual forms, and it is the composer that sets text right to left. Without it, Arabic appears as disconnected letters, and Arabic and Hebrew words can read backwards.

Setting up a new document for RTL

Binding direction is a document setting. It decides which side the spine is on, which side counts as the front, and the order of pages in the Pages panel.

Paragraph direction

Every paragraph in InDesign has a direction: left to right or right to left. Direction is separate from alignment and controls:

• Which end the cursor starts at when you click into a text frame
• Where punctuation lands (a full stop at the end of an Arabic sentence sits at the left end of the line)
• How mixed content (Arabic + numerals, Arabic + Latin brand names) is resolved
• Which side the first bullet or number appears on in a list

The Paragraph panel has two buttons for it: Left-to-Right Paragraph Direction and Right-to-Left Paragraph Direction. Arabic and Hebrew body text needs right to left.

The World-Ready composer

The composer is InDesign's line-breaking and shaping engine. Latin text works with the Adobe Paragraph Composer or the Single-line Composer. Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Hebrew need the Adobe World-Ready Paragraph Composer (or its single-line version).

Without it, in Arabic text:

• Arabic letters do not connect: you get isolated forms instead of joined words
• Letters display in reverse order, so words read backwards
• Ligatures like lam-alef (لا) do not form
• Kashida (tatweel) justification is not available
• Diacritics (short vowel marks) position incorrectly

Hebrew letters don't join, but Hebrew breaks too. The standard composers have no right-to-left support, so Hebrew text displays with its letters in reverse order and the words read backwards. Mixed Hebrew and Latin text also gets wrong cursor movement and misplaced punctuation.

Fonts for RTL: what works and what doesn't

Not every font that lists Arabic support works for production. For print work, a font needs:

• Full Unicode coverage for the target script
• All four positional forms: initial, medial, final, isolated
• Correct lam-alef ligature
• OpenType features for Kashida and mark positioning

Reliable choices for Arabic: Adobe Arabic (ships with Creative Cloud), Noto Naskh Arabic (free, Google), Lateef, Scheherazade New (SIL, free), Sakkal Majalla. For body text at small sizes, Adobe Arabic and Noto Naskh Arabic are the safest bets.

For Hebrew: Adobe Hebrew (ships with Creative Cloud), Noto Sans Hebrew, David CLM, Frank Ruehl CLM. Adobe Hebrew is a common choice for layouts that pair Hebrew with Latin text.

Handling mixed LTR and RTL content in the same frame

A typical Arabic layout contains brand names in Latin, product codes, URLs, phone numbers, prices and sometimes English phrases, all inside RTL paragraphs.

InDesign applies the Unicode bidirectional (Bidi) algorithm to this automatically. The paragraph direction sets the base direction, and Latin sequences inside the paragraph run left to right within their own run. You usually don't need to force this by hand.

Where it breaks:

• Numbers followed by units: in "١٠ kg", the unit can jump to the wrong side when the digit type and the surrounding direction don't match
• Punctuation at the boundary: parentheses, quotation marks and brackets are direction-neutral in Unicode. InDesign places them by context, and in complex mixed strings the context can be wrong
• All-Latin runs inside RTL paragraphs: a URL, model number or long product name reads left to right within the RTL line, which is correct, but the cursor movement can confuse editors who don't read Arabic

Mirroring images, icons and tables

Paragraph and story direction change the text. Images, icons, tables and charts keep their English orientation until someone changes them, and each one needs a decision: flip it, move it or leave it.

Combined icons need more care. In an icon that holds a question mark and a check mark, only the question mark should be mirrored, so the icon has to be edited in Illustrator. Flipping the whole frame in InDesign would turn the check mark around as well.

What a translated file looks like when RTL settings are wrong

When a translated file comes back with the wrong RTL configuration, you will see one or more of these:

Preparing a file for RTL translation: the agency checklist

If you send an existing LTR file for Arabic or Hebrew translation, the DTP side has to rework the layout. Preparing the source file reduces that rework and its cost. What the rework includes and what it costs per page is on the multilingual DTP service page.

Exporting Arabic and Hebrew to an accessible PDF

When the translated layout also has to be an accessible PDF (PDF/UA, for screen reader users), two problems can appear that the printed page never shows. A visual check misses both, and an automated checker such as PAC can pass the file anyway.

Bookmarks stored backwards

Bookmarks generated from the document structure of an Arabic PDF can hold their text in display order instead of reading order. On screen the entry looks almost right and may only sit on the wrong side of the panel, but a screen reader reads it backwards. Open every bookmark and retype the reversed ones in reading order.

Text tagged with the wrong language

A screen reader picks its voice from the language stored in the PDF. InDesign takes that language from the Language setting of the text in the layout, so when the setting is wrong or empty, Arabic or Hebrew text can end up tagged as English and read with an English voice. Set the language in the paragraph styles before export, then listen to the PDF with a screen reader such as NVDA.

Arabic, Hebrew and other non-Latin PDFs, with these checks, are covered on the PDF accessibility service page.

The short version

RTL layout in InDesign comes down to a few settings. The common mistakes are a standard English install without Middle Eastern features, paragraph direction left at left to right, the wrong composer, and Latin-only fonts. Each is quick to fix once you know where to look.

Set binding and story direction at the start. Binding can be changed later in Document Setup, but every spread then needs checking, so setting it up front costs less.

If you send files to a translation vendor for Arabic or Hebrew, send an IDML, provide the font, specify the digit format and state the binding direction in the brief. A short brief covering these four points prevents most of the rework.

RTL typesetting is a narrow specialism. lpn.network is one of the few places to search specifically for freelance Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi InDesign specialists.

Further reading