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Right alignment

Right alignment

The same way that left alignment is the most common type for left-to-right languages, right alignment is natural for right-to-left languages. Globally, there are 12 right-to-left languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, Persian, South Azeri (spoken in the Azerbaijan region of Iran), Aramaic (spoken in Northern Iraq, Southeast Turkey, Northeast Syria, and Northwestern Iran), Dhivehi/Maldivian, and Fulani (common in West Africa, Central Africa, and Sudan).

In turn, right alignment is the most unnatural type for left-to-right languages, since it contradicts the way people read and write. Like center alignment, it creates uneven edges of text paragraphs, making it difficult to scan.

Right alignment is suitable for languages read left-to-right for:

  • Image captions or other short phrases to create an emphasis among chunks of information
  • Numbers in tables to compare them effectively
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