Arabic harakat on the keyboard
Fatha, damma, kasra, sukun, shadda and the tanween forms, with the key for each on five layouts and the order to type them.
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- marks covered
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- layouts compared
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- on Shift in Arabic (101)
What harakat are
Arabic writes consonants and long vowels as letters. Short vowels, doubled consonants and the absence of a vowel are small marks above or below a letter: the harakat (حركات). Everyday Arabic leaves most of them out; the Quran, children's books, poetry and dictionaries write them in full, and anyone can add one to avoid a misreading.
Every mark and its key
Each mark is a separate character typed after its letter. Here is where each one is on five layouts, named by the key in the same place on a US keyboard:
| Mark | Name | What it shows | Code point | Arabic (101) | Arabic (102) | Arabic (102) AZERTY | Persian (Standard) | Urdu Phonetic (CRULP) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ◌َ | fatha | short a | U+064E | Shift + Q | Shift + Q | Shift + Q | Shift + U | Shift + Y |
| ◌ُ | damma | short u | U+064F | Shift + E | Shift + E | Shift + E | Shift + T | Shift + P |
| ◌ِ | kasra | short i | U+0650 | Shift + A | Shift + C | Shift + C | Shift + Y | Shift + I |
| ◌ْ | sukun | no vowel after the letter | U+0652 | Shift + X | Shift + X | Shift + X | Shift + Q | Shift + Q |
| ◌ّ | shadda | the consonant is doubled | U+0651 | Shift + ` | Shift + \ | Shift + \ | Shift + I | Shift + W |
| ◌ً | fathatan | -an at the end of a word | U+064B | Shift + W | Shift + W | Shift + W | Shift + R | Shift + ` |
| ◌ٌ | dammatan | -un at the end of a word | U+064C | Shift + R | Shift + R | Shift + R | Shift + W | Shift + , |
| ◌ٍ | kasratan | -in at the end of a word | U+064D | Shift + S | Shift + V | Shift + V | Shift + E | ` |
| ◌ٰ | superscript alef | long a written above the letter | U+0670 | not on layout | not on layout | not on layout | Shift + V | Shift + E |
On the standard Arabic (101) keyboard
All the common marks are on Shift, on the left side of the keyboard: fatha Shift + Q, damma Shift + E, kasra Shift + A, sukun Shift + X and shadda Shift + `. The tanween forms sit next to their vowels: fathatan Shift + W, dammatan Shift + R, kasratan Shift + S.
How to type a word with harakat
Type each letter, then its mark. كَتَبَ (kataba, he wrote) is ; Shift + Q J Shift + Q F Shift + Q. شُكْرًا (shukran, thank you) is A Shift + E ; Shift + X V Shift + W H.
Shadda with a vowel: which goes first?
A letter can carry shadda and a vowel at once. You can type them in either order. Unicode gives each mark a fixed position number (fatha 30, damma 31, kasra 32, shadda 33, sukun 34), and text that is normalized stores them by that order, so fatha always comes out before shadda. Fonts draw the pair the same way either way.
The marks move between layouts
Kasra is Shift + A on Arabic (101) but Shift + C on Arabic (102) and its AZERTY version. Persian (Standard) puts the marks on Shift + the top row, from sukun on Shift + Q to shadda on Shift + I. If the marks land in the wrong place, check which layout your system is set to.
Questions
Where are the harakat on an Arabic keyboard?
On the Arabic (101) layout they are on Shift: fatha Shift + Q, damma Shift + E, kasra Shift + A, sukun Shift + X, shadda Shift + `.
Do I have to type harakat?
No. Most everyday Arabic is written without them; add them where a word could be misread, or in texts that are traditionally fully voweled.
Do I type the letter or the mark first?
The letter first, then the mark. With shadda and a vowel, either order works.
Try it on the keyboard
More guides
Sources
- Unicode CLDR release 43: ar, ar-102key, ar-azerty, fa-extended
- Keyman urdu_phonetic_crulp (SIL Global, MIT)
Every key and count in this guide is computed from the layout data when the site is built, so it always matches the keyboards here.