# Arabic formatting problem: highlighting parts of a word splits it



## fdb

Hi Mike @mkellogg ,
This discussion started in a thread in the Arabic forum (here). I don't know if there's a solution to this. Thanks, Cherine




rightnow said:


> أقل*هُنَّ*


أقلهُنَّ has to be written as one word.


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## analeeh

fdb said:


> أقلهُنَّ has to be written as one word.



And probably would have been in the OP if it weren't for wordreference breaking up Arabic words partially bolded or with colour on them. I'm surprised you haven't noticed this before.


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## cherine

It's not just Wordreference. Even on Word, if you bolden(?) or use Italics in a part of a word, the highlighted letters will be split like this. The best way to highlight Arabic letters in the middle of a word is to use colors or to underline them.


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## elroy

Here on WRF coloring and underlining have that same effect.  It wasn't like this in older versions of the software.  Now, there is essentially no way to emphasize part of a word without splitting it.  I wonder if this can be fixed.


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## cherine

elroy said:


> Here on WRF coloring and underlining have that same effect.  It wasn't like this in older versions of the software.  Now, there is essentially no way to emphasize part of a word without splitting it.  I wonder if this can be fixed.


No, coloring and underlying do not affect the words:
كتب


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## elroy

cherine said:


> No, coloring and underlying do not affect the words:
> كتب


 Maybe it depends on the browser.  They do in Safari.


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## elroy

I just checked in Chrome and I have the same problem.  What browser are you using, Cherine?


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## mkellogg

أقل‍*هُنَّ*

HTML doesn't really do well with RTL text with HTML tags in the middle of it.

This page told me how to insert a "zero width space" or "joiner".  I inserted it just before the [ B ] and it worked, as you can see above.


cherine said:


> The best way to highlight Arabic letters in the middle of a word is to use colors or to underline them.


This seems to be right.  I was looking for some HTML code that we could wrap around the word, but couldn't find anything.


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## cherine

elroy said:


> I just checked in Chrome and I have the same problem.  What browser are you using, Cherine?


I use Internet Explorer and Edge. Both work well with the colors and underlines.
Do you have the problem with both colors and underlines, or just one of them?


mkellogg said:


> HTML doesn't really do well with RTL text with HTML tags in the middle of it.



That's unfortunate, but it's at least good to know so that we can inform the Arabic forum users so they can use another form of highlighting what they need to highlight. Like the zero width space thing you mentioned.


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## elroy

cherine said:


> Do you have the problem with both colors and underlines, or just one of them?


 Both.  Mozilla has the same problem too.


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## jann

hi Elroy,
Could it be a Mac problem?  Does the following display correctly for you?  I will add a screenshot after the text so that you can see how it shows up on my screen.

Plain word:
أقل‍هُنَّ

Apply color: okay
أقل‍هُنَّ

Apply underscore: still okay
أقل‍هُنَّ

Apply bold: seems to break things
أ*قل‍*هُنَّ

And here is a (rather enlarged) screenshot of what I see in FireFox 52 on Win10.
EDIT: corrected screenshot below


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