Hints for writing in Arabic

A little secret to understand writing Arabic, is thinking of it as handwriting. Think of the connection of letters together when you write, so you will connect letters when you write Arabic. Their shapes will change in order to adjust to the writing of other letters, so that it becomes possible to write without lifting the pen up from the paper (of course, when marking the dots, you will have to).

22 of the 28 Arabic letters have 4 variants:

1. Standing alone.
2. As the first letter in a word.
3. Inside the word, between two other letters.
4. As the last letter in a word, joining to the letter in front.

As for the remaining 6, they never join to the following letter, even when they are inside a word. This means that the writer has to lift his pencil, and even if he is inside the same word, the following letter will have to be written as if it was the first in a word. Examples of these odd 6, see 'alif and wâw .