Arabic punctuation and connectors

Arabic uses its own comma, semicolon and question mark, turned to face the text: ،, ؛ and ؟. The full stop, colon and exclamation mark are the same as in English.

Formal writing links ideas with connectors: ثم, لكن, بل, إذ, حيث. أما always takes ف before its answer: أما الطقس فجميل.

و and ف are written joined to the next word, with no space: وقال, فذهب. Many writers put و where English would put a comma, so a text may hold fewer commas.