Typography

Typefaces

Latin

By Rasmus Andersson, under the SIL Open Font License.

Arabic

Qaf’s version of IBM Plex Sans Arabic, under the SIL Open Font License.

Use only these four weights, in both scripts.

Qaf answers from the books it searches, and cites them.

Ask about prayer, fasting or zakat. Qaf searches more than 8,000 Islamic books and cites the ones its answer comes from.

Headline in SemiBold, tracked −0.03em, line-height 1.1. Body in Regular, untracked, line-height 1.6.

Tighten display tracking: Track headlines −0.02 to −0.04em. Leave body text untracked.
Tighten display leading: Set headlines at a line-height of 1.1–1.25.
Sentence case: Capitalize only the first word and proper nouns in headlines.
No italics: Set both families upright. Don’t slant text, even for emphasis.
No serif: Qaf’s type is sans only.
Curly quotes: Write Qur’an and “answer”, not Qur'an and "answer".

لِلْخَطِّ الْعَرَبِيِّ تَارِيخٌ طَوِيلٌ

“Arabic calligraphy has a long history,” in Qaf Arabic at line-height 1.6.

صفحة ١٢٣

Eastern Arabic digits in Arabic copy, with no middle dot (·) beside them.

صفحة 123

Western digits in Arabic copy.

Never track or stretch: No letter-spacing and no kashida stretching, at any size.
Give the marks room: Set Arabic text at a line-height of 1.45–1.6.
Right to left: Arabic runs right to left and aligns right. Quote with « », not “ ”.
Check vocalized Arabic: The IBM Plex Sans Arabic on Google Fonts draws shadda with kasra as one mark above the letter, and readers take it for fatha. Qaf Arabic puts the kasra below. Proof every vocalized line set in the Google Fonts version.