Working with bidirectional data

Arabic and Hebrew languages use an alphabet written and read from right to left. Numerics and Latin text imbedded in the right-to-left text are written and read from left to right. Therefore, these languages are called bidirectional languages.

Because bidirectional languages are written and read from right to left, you should avoid using the terms left and right. For example, right margin in Hebrew or Arabic documents is the beginning of the line and not the end. Use the words start and end in place of the words right and left.

Hebrew and Arabic have no case-sensitive characters. To avoid the incorrect presentation of characters, no case-sensitive checking or substitution should be performed. In addition, the Arabic language does not use abbreviations, therefore, you should use only complete words.