Digital Resources for Mental Health Professionals: Document Creation (Part 2)

This is part 2 of a series on document creation. Which is part of a multi-series of posts on digital resources for mental health professionals.

Right-to-Left Documents

While using WYSIWYG editors, I often see colleagues right justifying Arabic text instead of using the Right-To-Left (RTL) button to change the text direction. This breaks the order of characters in a line because of the way the software displays right-to-left languages compared to the default left-to-right latin text. Here is a demonstration:

Animated GIF showing how not marking the text RTL breaks the text flow when you insert latin words.

The RTL button often has this symbol ¶ along with an arrow stating the direction of the text, it should look like this ¶←. In some Word Processors such as LibreOffice, the buttons aren't displayed by default on the toolbar when you first install them. While there are keyboard shortcuts to switch text direction, making sure that the buttons are visible will make your life easier.

Instructions for LibreOffice From the menu bar at the top, select View -> Toolbars -> Customize... in the window that pops up, look for the Right-To-Left button in left hand side column and then use the arrow button to add it to the Formatting menu bar on the right hand side. It is also a good idea to add the Left-To-Right button too so as to revert the text direction back.

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This post is part of a challenge to write 150 blog posts of 150 words each this year. This is post 29 out of 150.