Gmail: How to Enable Right-to-Left Text

Most languages around the world are written from left to right, however, there are exceptions. A small number of languages write from right to left and top to bottom, this is typically just shortened to “right to left” or “RTL”. The most used right-to-left languages are Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, and Urdu, although other contemporary and ancient languages are also written from right to left.

Being developed by western societies most modern technology platforms are designed for left-to-right languages. Some websites on the internet, however, support displaying and writing text in a right-to-left format. Gmail is one such website, although right-to-left support must be enabled in the settings before it can be used.

To enable support for right-to-left text, click on the cogwheel icon in the top-right corner of the Gmail website, then click “See all settings”.

You can enable support for right-to-left text by clicking the “Right-to-left editing support on” radio button, which is disabled by default. The button can be found at the bottom of the “Language” section at the top of the “General” tab. Once you’ve clicked on the radio button, scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Save Changes” for the changes to take effect

In the email composer you can now use right-to-left text entry by clicking on the small down arrow in the bottom-right corner, then clicking the third option from the top, labelled “Right to left (Ctrl-Shift-.)”. Clicking this button will configure the entire email to use the right to left text entry method. If you want to use both right-to-left and left-to-right text in a single email, you can use the keyboard shortcut to affect individual paragraphs. “Ctrl-Shift-.” Sets a paragraph to use right-to-left, while “Ctrl-Shift-,” sets text back to left-to-right format.