I want to enter a 'centre dot' in a string of characters and I don't know how to do it on a mac. With my PC it's just a matter of alt 0189 and the centre dot for that font appears in the string of characters. I like the centre dot as a separator and would love to use it in my mac presentations. Microsoft 365 includes premium Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps, 1 TB cloud storage in OneDrive, advanced security, and more, all in one convenient subscription. With Microsoft 365, you get features as soon as they are released ensuring you’re always working with the latest. Create, edit, collaborate, and share documents using Word for Mac.
The use of Arabic diacritical marks has risen in the last century, with Islamic Scholarship growing in the West, we find many new books, translations, research papers, articles or even blog posts often consist of Arabic macrons.
When reading the transliteration of any language it may be more difficult than it seems. Not only would we be pronouncing some of the words wrong we could also be changing the meaning.
For example, ‘attahiyaatu lillaahi wasalawaatu wattayyibaat‘.
If you were asked to read the above or even were to write it in the Arabic language, unless you’re familiar with the Arabic language, how will you be able to differentiate if the ‘t’ in ‘Attahiyatu’ is a ت or a ط? How would you differentiate that the ‘s’in ‘wasalawatu’ is a س or a ص? Is the ‘h’ in ‘attahiyaatu’ a ح or a هـ? Also, how do you know how long each vowel is stretched for? Not only that, if you pronounce a letter incorrectly, it is a possibility that you may have changed the entire meaning of the word. It’s very unlikely you’ll be pronouncing it correctly or spelling it correctly. However, if you follow the codes and the diacritics, the transliteration would be as follows,
at-taḥīyātu lillāhi waṣ-ṣalawātu waṭ-ṭayyibāt [التحيات لله والصلوات والطيبات], which makes it much easier to pronounce as by following the codes and diacritics you will know that a ‘t’ is a ت and a ‘ṭ’ is a ط, a ‘ṣ’ is a ص and a ‘ḥ’ is a ح and so on.
The Arabic script has numerous diacritics. The word diacritic refers to all of the markings that can appear above and below letters to alter their pronunciation. A sign, such as an accent or cedilla, which when written above or below a letter indicates a difference in pronunciation from the same letter when unmarked or differently marked. In Arabic, diacritical marks are used for:
- Ḥurūf-e-maddah for which a hyphen-like symbol is added on top of the letter.
Fatḥah ( َ ) on a letter before an alif sākin ( اْ ) = Ā/ā
Ḍammah ( ُ ) on a letter before a wāw sākin ( وْ ) = Ū/ū
Kasrah ( ِ ) on a letter before yā sākin ( يْ ) = Ī/ī
- Certain full mouth letters.
Ḍ = ض
Ṣ = ص
Ṭ = ط
Ẓ = ظ
- ع and ح
Ḥ = ح
ʿ = ع
Transliteration Key Chart
You may follow the key chart below in order to accurately transliterate from Arabic to English.
How to add diacritical marks on Microsoft Word
To enable this feature in MS Word, download this file: Diacritic.dot
Through this file, you can use the following short-cuts to get diacritical marks.
Open “Windows Explorer” You will find it a hassle to have to load the Diacritic.dot file every time you want to transliterate, especially if you do it frequently. Here is how you can permanently load the file every time you open MS Office 2013 under Windows 7:
- Go to “C:”
- Go to “Program Files” or “Program Files (x86)”
- Go to “Microsoft Office” or “Microsoft OfficeXX” [where XX stands for the version you have]
- Go to “root”
- Go to “OfficeXX” [where XX stands for the version you have]
- Go to “Startup”
- Copy the “Diacritic.dot” file into this directory
Now every time you load Word, it will automatically load the Diacritic.dot file for you.
Dear Brother/ Sister Asalamualikum,
I just wanted to say jazakAllah Khair for so many useful resources on this page I always refer to this site when I am working on my teacher’s books. May Allah almighty reward you abundantly both in this world and the hereafter InshaAllah.
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This tutorial shows how to insert nonbreaking spaces in Microsoft Word using the Symbol dialog box method and the keyboard shortcut method. Before we start the tutorial, we’ll briefly define nonbreaking spaces and see what they look like compared to regular spaces.
This tutorial is also available as a YouTube video showing all the steps in real time.
Watch more than fifty other videos about Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat on my YouTube channel.
The images below are from Word for Office 365, which is currently the same as Word 2019. However, the steps are the same for Word 2016 and are similar for Word 2013 and Word 2010.
What Are Nonbreaking Spaces?
Nonbreaking spaces are special characters that keep words or individual characters from separating at line breaks. Nonbreaking spaces are particularly useful between ellipsis points. However, you can use them between any words or characters that you want to stay together.
In Microsoft Word, regular spaces are represented by a small, solid dot and nonbreaking spaces are represented by a slightly larger circle positioned higher than the regular-space dot.
To see these and other formatting symbols in your Word document, select the Show/Hide button in the Paragraph group of the Home tab. To hide the formatting symbols, reselect the Show/Hide button.
Insert Nonbreaking Spaces in Microsoft Word Using the Symbol Dialog Box
1. Place your cursor where the nonbreaking space should be inserted. Alternately, if a regular space already appears where the nonbreaking space should be inserted, select the regular space, as shown in the image below.
2. Select the Insert tab.
3. Select Symbols in the Symbols group.
4. Select More Symbols in the drop-down menu.
5. Select the Special Characters tab in the Symbol dialog box.
6. Select Nonbreaking Space from the Character menu.
7. Select the Insert button to insert the nonbreaking space.
Pro Tip: You can move your cursor around the document and insert additional nonbreaking spaces or other special characters while the Symbol dialog box is open.
8. Select the Close button to close the Symbol dialog box.
Insert Nonbreaking Spaces in Microsoft Word Using the Keyboard Shortcut
1. Place your cursor where the nonbreaking space should be inserted. Alternately, if a regular space already appears where the nonbreaking space should be inserted, select the regular space (see figure 1).
2. Select Ctrl + Shift + Space on your keyboard to insert the nonbreaking space.
How To Place A Dot Under A Letter In Microsoft Word For Mac Free
Further Reading:
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