Arabic tatweel remover: questions and guides
Each guide here answers one question with a practical example, then takes you to the tool to try it yourself. Guides: 7.
Questions
- How to remove tatweel from Arabic textWhat the tatweel or kashida is, why it turns one word into two different words for a computer, and how to remove it without changing any other character.
- I like the stretched look in my posts but my stretches are long and uneven; can I shorten them instead of removing them completely?Shorten mode turns every run of two or more tatweel characters into exactly one, so each stretched word keeps a short, even stretch instead of losing it.
- I wrote my offers hashtag with a stretched letter because it looks nicer; why doesn't it show up with posts using the same hashtag without the stretch?The stretch is a real character (U+0640), so a stretched hashtag is different text from the plain one. Remove it from the caption before posting.
- How do I find out how many product names in my file contain stretched letters before I clean it?Paste your product names into the tatweel remover: «Tatweel found» shows the size of the problem and «Words affected» how many words carry a stretch.
- Does removing tatweel change anything else in my text, like diacritics, numbers or English words?No. Only the kashida (U+0640) is deleted; letters, diacritics, digits, punctuation and Latin text pass through, and a tatweel carrying a mark stays by default.
- I copied Arabic text from a justified PDF and it came out with stretched letters nobody typed; how do I clean it?Some layout programs justify Arabic lines by inserting tatweel characters, and copying brings them along. Remove them all; the words and their reading do not change.
- Do stretched letters make my message longer in characters than the same message without them?Yes. Every tatweel is a character of its own and two bytes, so a short stretched phrase can run 60% longer in characters while the word count stays the same.