The Arabic font in my design app draws diacritics overlapping and messy on my ad post; how do I remove them but keep only the shadda?

Why marks look messy in designs

Some Arabic fonts used in design apps do not position vowel marks well, especially at large sizes or with tight line spacing. A fatha touches the line above, or a shadda and a fatha pile up on one letter. The tool does not fix the font or change how it draws, but it removes the cause of the crowding: the marks themselves.

Why the shadda in particular

In a short ad headline, an Arabic reader does not need most vowel marks. The shadda, though, can carry meaning or prevent confusion, and it may be part of the rhythm the designer wants. Keeping just that one is a middle way: a clean headline that reads easily, with a single mark where it counts.

Real examples

The headline: «عُرُوضُ ٱلصَّيْفِ».

• With the default groups: «عروض ٱلصيف», with 7 marks removed: 5 harakat, a shadda and a sukun.
• With the shadda group switched off: «عروض ٱلصّيف», with 6 marks removed and the shadda kept on the sad.

A second headline with tanwin and Arabic-Indic digits: «خَصْمٌ حَتَّى ٥٠٪ عَلَى ٱلْعُطُورِ». With the shadda off it became «خصم حتّى ٥٠٪ على ٱلعطور»: tanwin, harakat and sukun went (11 marks), the shadda in «حتّى» stayed, and the digits and percent sign were untouched.

Watch the alef wasla

In both examples the «ٱ» in «ٱلصيف» and «ٱلعطور» stayed. That is the alef wasla, a letter in its own right rather than a mark, so the tool leaves it alone. Some fonts draw it with a small head above the alef that you may not want in an ad. If you prefer a plain alef, swap it yourself in the design app or a text editor before pasting. The tool does not fold letters.

Steps

1. Copy the headline from your design app or from the file your copywriter sent.
2. Paste it into the Arabic diacritic remover.
3. Switch off «Shadda» and leave tanwin, harakat and sukun on.
4. Copy the result and paste it over the text in your design. Letters, punctuation and digits did not change, so no reformatting is needed.

If the headline has stretched letters

Some copywriters add stretched letters for decoration, and in the same fonts these can misbehave next to vowel marks. The diacritic tool counts those characters and tells you how many there are, but does not remove them. To remove or shorten them, run the text through the Arabic tatweel remover afterwards.