Persian Numerals

Imagine a script where the letters of words run from right to left but the numbers go from left to right...Also, beware of the English expression "Arabic numerals"--  it may get you in even more trouble in this context!

ARABIC

PERSIAN

Notice especially numbers 4, 5 and 6 where the Arabic and Persian differ. If you see Arabic and Persian numbers mixed and matched freely in Persian publications,  that is only because the publisher was using a hacked Arabic font.  This is not to be imitated!

Persian is a little kinder than Arabic to non-natives who are prone to mix up the 0 and 5 although that hasn't stopped the confusion entirely and there is no shortage of stories concerning missed appointments, trains and airplanes and other misunderstandings on this account! Also, you may have seen the letter Heh when written in isolation (Heh-ye tanhā) is often written as ‍  (Heh-ye avval) just to distinguish Heh from Zero and Five. In English (and other languages), we often have trouble with the letter "o" and number "zero", don't forget!

If you have Word 2000, go Options > Right-to-left > Numeral > Context:

(Thanks to Hossein mailbox@chaapaar.mailshell.com who sent in the above Word 2000 tip including screen-shot!)

Vista and Office 2007 users: Finding the "context" option in Word 2007 is tricky and it seems they tried to hide this on purpose. If you are in Word, find the OFFICE BUTTON icon top left of Word, press that and find WORD OPTIONS which is at the bottom right of the little menu box that opens. After that Advanced >> Numeral >> Context.

PAGE NUMBERS

There are several ways to get page numbers in Persian numerals in recent versions of MS Word, at least from MS Office 2003 on.

First it's best you go Tools > Options > Complex Scripts > Numeral > Context which you may have already done anyhow to get any numbers in your document to be in Persian and not English/Western style as outlined above.

Now, according to Word Help, automatic Persian page numbering is achieved by going Insert > Page Numbers > Format and then checking the right-to-left box option. This way actually does work sometimes. However, for some reason, this right-to-left box sometimes is missing even though you've fully enabled Word for Persian typing. That's a mystery bug! However, you can solve the problem by just going Insert > Page Numbers  and getting the page numbering going in English/Western style. Now, go to the page number of one of your pages and click on it to invoke the "header" or "footer" of the page and highlight that page number and then just hit the right-to-left cursor button up on the tool bar as you would normally do to get right-to-left Persian text cursor movement. You might say, "I was already typing a right-to-left document and the cursor WAS in right-to-left mode!" That may be true but for some reason, clicking on the page number and bringing up the "header" or "footer" throws the cursor into left-to-right direction.

In case you don't have any idea what is meant by the "right-to-left cursor button", just hit  the shortcut: RightCtrl+RightShift for getting numerals used for Persian (and LeftCtrl+LeftShift for getting English/Western ones back again".)

The help of Hossein N, one very nice Linux user who emailed from Iran and patiently explained this tip is gratefully acknowledged!

PAGE NUMBERS for older versions of Word that can't do the above method. This method should be avoided if possible.

Page Numbering in Persian had a bug in earlier versions and didn't work.  Therefore, if that's what you have, you MUST resort to a hack fix if you want your page numbers to be in Persian.   (For the record,  while my friend Roozbeh contented himself with a mere grimace of disgust, my other  friend, Behdad could not help but blurt out in despair to  please, please not put yet another non-standard solution on the site!)

First, You need to download and install this special font called Nazanin-s or qnazb-s.  This is a different version of the Nazanin font which you may have already but this version is only good for this one page number feature.  (Note: this is not the only font that has been hacked to solve the page numbers problem.  There are in fact, zillions of other fonts on the internet that do this trick but just to keep it simple, I'm just choosing this one.) If you forgot how to install and download fonts, click here.

Once you have installed qnazb-s, you're ready to proceed:

Insert Page Numbers as for English:

You should now see page numbers at the top or bottom of each page as you have specified.  There is a box to check if you prefer to start the page numbering with page 2.

Now, double-click on page number 1 (or page number 2 if that is your first numbered page):

A dotted box now appears around the number.  Since I had opted for page numbers at the top, the box is in the "Header" portion of the page.  (Page numbers at the bottom will be in the "Footer" portion.)

Now, highlight number 1.  That is, mouse over it to select it:

As you can see, a hatched box has now surrounded the number.  

Now, double-click on the same number inside the hatched box.  This blackens the entire box which means the number has been selected.

Now, while the number is still selected, change the font to Nazanin-S.  In your list of fonts, it's the one below your regular Nazanin (they are listed in alphabetical order) but unfortunately has not been named properly so look at the picture below so you know what to look for.

Once you have changed the first number to Nazanin-S, look at the other page numbers.  Magic!  They have all been changed to Persian. Hurray!

For your information, this ingenious solution has come to you courtesy of two people, just like you who came to the site to get a little information and to then give back a little for the benefit of others.  First one Ali in England emailed to say he'd stumbled upon the solution to Persian page numbers and then another Ali in Japan emailed to ask if there really was no way to do it and was quickly pressed into service to confirm we really did have a solution and the best and simplest way to explain to others.  (I was myself too busy the whole time to look into the matter.)  You can eavesdrop on some of the conversation here and maybe get inspired to donate some of your tips as well.

For Footnotes and Endnotes, look on the Toolbar for Insert then Reference then Footnote.

Here is a little addition / subtraction remedial math program for you to practice your Persian numbers.

The decimal separator (U+066B) is like a forward slash, but almost two-thirds the size and moved half its height lower.
The thousands separator (U+066C) is apostrophe-like or tick-like, but may take different shapes based on the style of the writer or font.

Please be sure to include these two symbols in the next Persian font!

Librarian's Nightmare

Check out this font quite possibly designed by some evil Jinn's:

Thanks to my friend, Jamal Gabobe for bringing this font to my attention:  "I thought you said the zeroes are filled-in dots and the fives are more like circles.  What's this?"

What's wrong with this picture?

Click on photo to get full size

(The sign-painter got momentarily confused....He's put 195 in Persian and 159 in English!)

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