Arabic Typography & Font Audit
An Arabic typography audit for the layer screenshots miss
The layer that decides whether Arabic looks native or merely present.
- Price
- $800–$1.5K fixed fee
- Timeline
- 3–5 working days
- Starts with
- A free scan
serif fallback · line-height 1.1 · italicالعروض الأسبوعية
تُعرض الأسعار بالريال السعودي وتشمل ضريبة القيمة المضافة. يُمكنك إلغاء الطلب خلال أربع وعشرين ساعة من تأكيده.
Plex Arabic · line-height 1.8 · boldالعروض الأسبوعية
تُعرض الأسعار بالريال السعودي وتشمل ضريبة القيمة المضافة. يُمكنك إلغاء الطلب خلال أربع وعشرين ساعة من تأكيده.
Arabic typography fails in ways that are invisible to a reader of Latin scripts and unmissable to everyone else. Tracking tuned for Latin headings pulls a connected script apart in the browsers that apply it. A face with no Arabic coverage falls back silently, so the page renders in something nobody chose. Line-height tuned for Latin crowds ascenders and descenders that Arabic actually uses. None of it looks broken on a screenshot review; all of it looks cheap to the audience you translated for.
This is for you if
The situations this engagement was built for.
Your brand font is Latin-only and the Arabic renders in whatever the device picks
Your Arabic looks correct in screenshots and somehow still looks cheap
Your design system was tuned for Latin: tracking, uppercase labels, tight line-height
You are choosing an Arabic typeface and want the licensing and weights settled first
What the audit looks for
Four ways Arabic type fails quietly
Each pair below is the same Arabic string rendered live in this page, differing in one property. Side by side the damage is obvious; alone, on a page nobody on the team reads, it survives design review and ships.
Many letters differ only by their dots, and below 14px readers start misreading words.
Shippedfont-size: 11pxتُعرض الأسعار بالريال السعودي وتشمل ضريبة القيمة المضافة. يُمكنك إلغاء الطلب خلال أربع وعشرين ساعة من تأكيده.
Readyfont-size: 16pxتُعرض الأسعار بالريال السعودي وتشمل ضريبة القيمة المضافة. يُمكنك إلغاء الطلب خلال أربع وعشرين ساعة من تأكيده.
Arabic marks need vertical room. Tight line-height makes lines crowd.
Shippedline-height: 1.15تُعرض الأسعار بالريال السعودي وتشمل ضريبة القيمة المضافة. يُمكنك إلغاء الطلب خلال أربع وعشرين ساعة من تأكيده.
Readyline-height: 1.8تُعرض الأسعار بالريال السعودي وتشمل ضريبة القيمة المضافة. يُمكنك إلغاء الطلب خلال أربع وعشرين ساعة من تأكيده.
Illustrative: the specimens on this page. Drawn from our own fixtures and public-site scans, not a client engagement.
Scope
What is in the engagement
What you get
- Font stack review across every breakpoint, including what actually shapes the Arabic rather than what is declared
- Fallback behavior under real network conditions, not just a warm cache
- Letterform integrity: tracking, synthesised italics, uppercase transforms applied to Arabic
- Line-height, diacritic clearance and comfortable measure for Arabic body text
- A concrete face recommendation with licensing notes, and the CSS to implement it
What we need from you
- The URL
- Your current font licenses, so the recommendation is one you can use
Process
How it runs
Timeline: 3–5 working days. Every step ends with something you can see.
Measure what paints
We record which face actually shapes each Arabic run at every breakpoint, which is often not the one your CSS declares.
Stress the stack
Cold cache, slow network, missing weights: the conditions where fallback happens and where most Arabic typography quietly degrades.
Review the letterforms
Tracking, synthesised italics, uppercase transforms, line-height and diacritic clearance, and measure on long Arabic body text.
Recommend and hand over
A face recommendation with licensing notes and weights, and the CSS to implement it, including the stack order that stops fallback surprises.
Backed by the engine
The checks this engagement leans on
Every finding starts as one of these, with evidence attached. Each has its own page explaining when it fires and how to fix it. Browse every check.
- Arabic text falling back past the declared font family (measured, declared, or a webfont that failed to load)When no font in the stack carries Arabic, or the declared webfont fails to load, each device substitutes its own default and the Arabic looks different on Windows, iOS and Android.
- Letter-spacing applied to Arabic text (breaks the connected script)Arabic letters join along a baseline, so positive tracking breaks the joins and negative tracking overlaps the letterforms, typically from a Latin type scale never scoped away from Arabic.
- Line-height below 1.5 on Arabic body textArabic diacritics, ascenders and descenders need more vertical room than Latin, so tight leading on blocks of twenty or more Arabic words makes lines touch;
line-height: normalis left alone. - Arabic body text below 14pxMany Arabic letters differ only by their dots, so body text set below 14px, in blocks of ten or more Arabic words, is where readers start misreading words.
- Italic/oblique applied to Arabic textArabic has no italic tradition, so the browser fakes one by mechanically slanting the letters, and text meant to look emphasized reads as distorted instead; weight or color works better.
- Latin display styling (uppercase + tracking) applied to ArabicArabic has no letter case, so a
text-transformon Arabic text has no effect on its letters and signals a selector styled for Latin headings that nobody reviewed for the Arabic side.
Get started
Scan first. Then we talk about your findings.
The scan takes about a minute and costs nothing. Your inquiry arrives with it attached, so the reply starts from evidence about your site rather than questions about it.
- Paste the URL of your Arabic page.
- See your score and top findings.
- Tell us what you need. A person replies within one working day.
Start with a scan
We would rather look before we talk. Give us the URL and we will run the same scan the homepage runs, then you can tell us what you need.
FAQ
Questions about the typography audit
The rest of the ladder
Other ways we can help
- We look
Arabic Readiness Certification
A pre-launch audit by people who read Arabic, ending in a certificate.See the engagement - We fix
RTL conversion
We take the product from its measured score to a clean one, and the scan is the receipt.See the engagement - We watch
Localization QA Retainer
For teams shipping continuously without an Arabic speaker on staff.See the engagement - We rebuild
Ritla UI rollout
We replace the components that keep breaking in Arabic with Ritla components, so the fixes stay fixed.See the engagement - We design
Custom theme
Your brand as a Ritla theme: a Figma file and code on the same tokens, Arabic-first.See the engagement - You deliver
Agency partners
Resell certification and conversion under your own brand.See the engagement
Find out where your Arabic stands
A free scan of one page, scored and explained in about a minute. If it tells you everything you needed, that is a good outcome too.
Start with a free scanAll services