Arabic Lorem Ipsum Generator
Generate placeholder text in Arabic (العربية) for design mockups, font testing, and layout verification — written in real Arabic characters, not corrupted Latin.
About Arabic (العربية)
Speakers: 420 million speakers (native + L2).
Where it's spoken: Middle East, North Africa, parts of Sub-Saharan Africa; liturgical use across the Muslim world.
Script: Arabic alphabet (28 letters) — also used for Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Kurdish.
Direction: right-to-left (RTL).
Text expansion vs English:
~15% more compact.
Unique characters to verify: 28 base letters with up to 4 contextual forms each (initial, medial, final, isolated); diacritics (تَشْكِيل) for vowels.
A short history of the Arabic alphabet
The Arabic script developed from the Nabataean alphabet around the 4th century AD and became the second-most-used writing system in the world after Latin. The script is cursive — letters connect to neighbours — and runs from right to left. Each letter has up to four contextual forms depending on whether it begins, ends, sits inside, or stands alone in a word.
Arabic letters serve as the writing system for many other languages: Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Kurdish, Sindhi, and Uyghur all use modified Arabic alphabets. Arabic-script support in your fonts and CSS therefore reaches far beyond Arabic-language audiences.
Arabic typography for designers
Arabic typography is fundamentally right-to-left (RTL). The entire UI mirrors: text flows right-to-left, navigation arrows reverse direction, layouts flip horizontally. CSS Logical Properties (margin-inline-start, padding-inline-end) make RTL designs maintainable; physical properties (margin-left) break in RTL.
Arabic letters connect cursively. A poorly-built font that uses non-contextual glyphs produces broken-looking text — letters appear as disconnected fragments. Always test with fonts that handle Arabic OpenType properly. Western numerals (0-9) are standard in modern Arabic typesetting; Eastern Arabic numerals (٠-٩) are reserved for traditional or religious contexts.
Fonts that render Arabic well
For web designs targeting Arabic-language audiences, these fonts have proven Arabic support:
- Noto Sans Arabic
- Cairo
- Tajawal
- Amiri (serif)
- IBM Plex Sans Arabic
- Adobe Arabic
Always provide an explicit Arabic-supporting font in your CSS font-family stack — relying on browser fallbacks produces inconsistent rendering across operating systems.
Common pitfalls in Arabic design
- Using physical CSS properties (left, right, margin-left) instead of logical properties (inline-start, inline-end)
- Not setting
dir="rtl"on the<html>or container element - Using a Latin font as fallback that has no Arabic glyphs — text disappears
- Mixing Arabic with Latin numerals can produce bidi (bidirectional) reordering issues — wrap mixed strings in
<bdi>tags - Forgetting to flip icons (arrows, chevrons, back-buttons) — they should point opposite direction in RTL
- Setting
letter-spacingon Arabic — breaks the cursive joins between letters
Localization tips for Arabic
- Arabic dialects vary significantly. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the formal written form used across the Arab world; spoken Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf, and Maghrebi Arabic differ substantially
- Arabic text is about 85% the length of English, with similar UI sizing requirements
- Numerals: use Western 0-9 (Arabic numerals as English calls them) for modern UIs; ٠-٩ for traditional contexts
- Reading direction reverses: form fields are right-aligned, breadcrumbs flow right to left
- Avoid pre-translated images (those baked-in screenshots) — use SVG icons that flip via CSS
Why classic Latin Lorem Ipsum doesn't work for Arabic
The classic Lorem Ipsum is a corrupted Latin passage from Cicero. It's perfect for Latin-script designs because it produces letter and word lengths that look like real text. But for Arabic designs, classic Latin lorem ipsum is the wrong choice:
- It uses Latin script, so it can't reveal Arabic font rendering issues.
- It runs left-to-right, hiding RTL layout bugs entirely.
- Designers shown Latin placeholder cannot evaluate the visual rhythm of Arabic on the page.
- Stakeholder reviews on Latin lorem ipsum miss layout problems that only surface with native script.
The Arabic placeholder above uses real Arabic words and characters, so what you see in the mockup is what you'll see in production.
Lorem Ipsum in other languages
Designing for multiple locales? We have placeholder generators for 19 other languages:
Chinese
中文
Japanese
日本語
Korean
한국어
Hebrew
עברית
Russian
Русский
Spanish
Español
French
Français
German
Deutsch
Italian
Italiano
Portuguese
Português
Dutch
Nederlands
Polish
Polski
Turkish
Türkçe
Greek
Ελληνικά
Hindi
हिन्दी
Vietnamese
Tiếng Việt
Thai
ภาษาไทย
Indonesian
Bahasa Indonesia
Swedish
Svenska
Classic Latin
Lorem ipsum
Frequently asked questions
How do I make my CSS layout RTL-aware?
Use CSS Logical Properties throughout:
margin-inline-start instead of margin-left, padding-inline-end instead of padding-right, border-inline-start instead of border-left. Set dir="rtl" on the parent and the entire layout flips.Which font should I use for Arabic on the web?
Noto Sans Arabic is the Google Fonts default — comprehensive and free. Cairo and Tajawal are popular modern alternatives with strong Latin pairing. For traditional or religious content, Amiri is a beautiful serif option.
Why are my Arabic letters showing as disconnected?
Your font lacks proper Arabic OpenType — it's using isolated forms instead of contextual joining. Switch to a quality Arabic font like Noto Sans Arabic or Cairo. Letters in Arabic must connect cursively to read naturally.
Should I use Eastern (٠-٩) or Western (0-9) Arabic numerals?
Western numerals (0-9) are standard in modern Arabic typography across newspapers, websites, and most signage. Eastern Arabic numerals (٠-٩) are still used in traditional, religious, or stylistic contexts. For UIs, default to Western unless your client requests otherwise.
How do I handle text that mixes Arabic with English?
Wrap each language run in a
<bdi> tag (Bidirectional Isolation) so the browser doesn't merge them awkwardly. The Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm handles most cases automatically, but mixing names, prices, and punctuation can produce unexpected reordering — manual <bdi> avoids it.Do I need to worry about diacritics (tashkīl)?
Usually no. Arabic vowel diacritics (fatḥa, kasra, ḍamma, etc.) are included in religious and educational texts but omitted from everyday writing. Display them only when your content requires it — your font must have proper combining-mark support.
What's the difference between Modern Standard Arabic and dialects?
Modern Standard Arabic (fuṣḥā) is the unified written form used in news, formal speech, and pan-Arab content. Spoken dialects (Egyptian, Gulf, Levantine, Maghrebi) differ in vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar — they're not always mutually intelligible. For web content, MSA is the safe default.