Dot Placement
مواضع النقاط
I'm trying to tell these letters apart by their dots.
Arabic has 28 letters but only about 18 base shapes — and at first I couldn't tell them apart. Then I realized: it's the dots above and below doing the work. ب, ت, ث are the same skeleton with one dot below, two dots above, three dots above. Move a dot, change the meaning.
Why It Matters
Misplaced, missing, or ambiguous dots can change a word's meaning entirely. Typographically, dot placement affects clarity at small sizes, where dots may collide with diacritics or neighboring letters. Good Arabic typefaces carefully manage dot size, spacing, and positioning across all contextual forms to maintain legibility.
Dot Groups
No dots
One dot above
One dot below
Two dots above
Two dots below
Three dots above