How to Write in Farsi: A Step-by-Step Guide to Persian Handwriting

To write in Farsi, you write from right to left and join most letters together, like cursive. Each of the 32 letters has up to four shapes depending on its place in a word, and seven letters (ا د ذ ر ز ژ و) never join to the letter after them. Short vowels are usually left out, so کتاب (ketâb, book) is written with only k-t-â-b.

That is the whole system in one paragraph. This guide takes it apart step by step, the way a tutor would at a table with you: how to hold the page and where the baseline is, how letters change shape, how joining works, which strokes to make first, how to handle dots and “teeth”, graded practice words, and how to type Persian when you do not want to write by hand. Every example has Persian script, pronunciation and English, and there are exercises along the way.

Six things that make Persian writing different from English

1. Right to left. You start at the right edge of the line and move left. Books and notebooks open from what an English reader would call the back.
2. Joined letters. Persian is always cursive, in print and in handwriting. There is no “print” version where letters stand apart.
3. Letters change shape. A letter looks different at the start, middle and end of a word. The changes are mostly a matter of adding or cutting off a connecting stroke, not new letters to learn.
4. Seven letters break the chain. ا, د, ذ, ر, ز, ژ and و join to the letter before them but never to the letter after them, so many words have small gaps inside them.
5. No capital letters. Names, the first word of a sentence and the pronoun “I” (من, man) are written like any other word.
6. Short vowels are usually not written. Only the long vowels â, i and u have full letters. Children’s books and dictionaries add small vowel marks; everyday writing does not.

If you have not met the letters yet, start with our Persian alphabet guide with all 32 letters and come back here for the writing side. And if you are wondering whether you can skip the script altogether: you can start speaking without it, but you will hit a wall quickly.

Before you start: paper, pen and the baseline

Use lined paper and a pen or pencil that moves smoothly; a fine felt-tip is easier than a ballpoint for curves. Start each line at the right margin. Right-handed writers sometimes worry about smudging the ink as their hand moves left over fresh writing. In practice it is the opposite of English for left-handers: Persian is often easier for left-handed people, and right-handed people simply learn to keep the hand slightly below the line.

The ruled line is your baseline. The connecting strokes between letters run along it, and every letter has a fixed relation to it:

• Letters that sit on the line: the “tooth” letters ب پ ت ث in their joined forms, س ش, ص ض, ط ظ, ف, ک گ, د ذ and ه.
• Tall letters that rise above it: ا, ل, the upright stroke of ط ظ and the slanted top of ک گ. Make these clearly taller than the rest, roughly two to three times the height of a tooth.
• Letters that dip below it: ر ز ژ and و curve down under the line; so do the end forms of ج چ ح خ, ع غ, ی, ن, ل, م and ق, and the end bowls of س ش ص ض.

A useful habit from day one: keep the body of each letter small. Beginners often write the teeth of ب or س as tall as ا, and then بـ and ا look the same. Small teeth, tall alef.

Learn letters by shape family, not alphabetical order

Many Persian letters share a body and differ only in their dots. Learn the body once, then the dot patterns. This cuts the job from 32 shapes to about 18.

Four letters, پ چ ژ گ, exist in Persian but not in standard Arabic; they were made by adding dots or a stroke to Arabic letters. Several letters also share one sound in modern Persian, for example ت and ط are both t, and ذ ز ض ظ are all z. You learn which one a word uses the way English speakers learn “ph” in “phone”: word by word. Most of the rarer ones appear in words borrowed from Arabic; that is a legacy of the Arabic script Persian adopted.

The four forms of each letter

Grammar books talk about four forms: isolated (standing alone), initial (joined only to the letter after it), medial (joined on both sides) and final (joined only to the letter before it). Think of it less as four letters and more as one letter with or without its connecting strokes. In the table, the line ـ shows where a letter joins its neighbor. The isolated form is simply the letter as listed in the second column.

Three patterns to notice:

• Initial and medial forms are short. They drop the tail or bowl and leave only the head, ready to connect: ب becomes a small tooth بـ, ع becomes عـ.
• Final and isolated forms keep the tail. That is why end-of-word letters look bigger and often dip below the line.
• Non-joiners have only two shapes. For ا د ذ ر ز ژ و the initial form is the same as the isolated form, and the medial form is the same as the final form.

Two letters need extra care. ه changes the most: هـ at the start, ـهـ in the middle and ـه at the end. And ی has two dots under it at the start and middle of a word (یـ ـیـ) but no dots at the end (ـی). For each letter’s sound, forms and example words, our Farsi alphabet lessons have one page per letter.

How joining works, with real words

The rule is simple: write each letter joined to the next one, unless it is one of the seven non-joiners. After a non-joiner, the next letter starts fresh in its initial (or isolated) form. Splitting a word into its connected pieces is the single most useful drill when you start.

Listen and copy each word: کتاب Listen سلام Listen دوست Listen ایران Listen خانه Listen فارسی Listen

The lâm-alef ligature

When ل is followed by ا, you do not write them as a normal join. They merge into one shape, لا, like a narrow V. You see it in سلام (salâm) and بالا (bâlâ, up) Listen. Fonts do this automatically when you type; by hand you have to do it yourself. The other way round, alef then lâm, is written normally: الان (alân, now).

Gaps inside words and spaces between words

Because of the non-joiners, a single word can have gaps, and a reader has to tell those gaps from the spaces between words. Keep gaps inside a word tight and make the space between words clearly wider. The same idea applies to prefixes and suffixes that should not join, such as می‌ in می‌نویسم (minevisam, I write) or the plural ‌ها in کتاب‌ها (ketâbhâ, books). In handwriting you leave a small gap; on a keyboard this is the “half space” or zero-width non-joiner, a character that keeps the parts apart without adding a full space.

Stroke order: how to actually move the pen

Persian has no single official stroke order the way Chinese does, but teachers in Iran pass on the same habits, and they make writing faster and neater.

1. Write the body of the connected piece in one movement. For کتاب, write the body of کتا without lifting the pen, then the separate ب.
2. Add dots and extra strokes afterwards. Once a piece is done, go back and add its dots, the slanted top of ک and گ, and the upright of ط and ظ. Many people finish the whole word first, then add all its dots.
3. Move right to left inside each letter too. Teeth, hooks and loops are mostly drawn from right to left, so the pen ends where the next letter begins.
4. Drop below the line in one stroke. For ر, و and final ی or ن, curve down and finish with a light flick to the left, without retracing.
5. Write آ as alef plus a wave. Write ا first, then the small wavy line (madd) over it.

Handwriting tip: in everyday writing, many Iranians write two dots as a short dash and three dots as a small inverted v (like a tiny roof). Both are normal and you should be able to read them; as a beginner, write the dots separately until the letters feel natural. You will also see س and ش written as a smooth line without teeth in quick handwriting. Learn the toothed form first.

Practice words, from easy to harder

Write each word five times, saying it aloud as you write. Start with words made only of non-joiners, so you can focus on shape and position on the line before you think about joining.

Listen to a few as you write: روز Listen چای Listen شهر Listen لاله Listen پنجره Listen

Then try a first sentence: من فارسی می‌نویسم. (man fârsi minevisam, “I write Persian.”) Listen Notice the small gap after می‌. Writing your own name is a great motivator; our tool to write your name in Persian shows the spelling so you can copy it by hand.

Vowels: what you write and what you leave out

Persian has six vowels. The three long ones are written with letters: â with ا (or آ at the start of a word), i with ی, and u with و. The three short ones, a, e and o, are normally not written at all. So کتاب is literally k-t-â-b, and you know to say ketâb because you know the word. This is why reading feels hard at first and why writing actually feels easier: when you write, you already know what you mean.

A few spelling rules connect to vowels:

• A word cannot start with a bare vowel sound in writing. A word that begins with a vowel is written with ا as a carrier: اسم (esm, name), امروز (emruz, today), ایران (Irân), او (u, he or she).
• Final -e is usually written with ه. خانه (khâne), لاله (lâle). This silent-looking ه is a vowel, not an h.
• و can be v, u or o. ورزش (varzesh, sport), دوست (dust), تو (to, you).

The vowel marks themselves (zabar for a, zir for e, pish for o) and the doubling mark are explained in our lesson on Farsi vowels.

Numbers and punctuation

Persian uses its own digits: ۰ ۱ ۲ ۳ ۴ ۵ ۶ ۷ ۸ ۹ (0 to 9). They run left to right like English digits, so ۱۲۵ is 125 even though the words around it run right to left. The forms of ۴, ۵ and ۶ differ from those used in Arabic-speaking countries. Our guide to Persian numbers from 1 to 1,000 shows how to write and say them.

Punctuation is mostly turned around: the comma is ،, the semicolon ؛ and the question mark ؟. The period, exclamation mark and colon look the same as in English. Quotation marks in careful writing are guillemets: «سلام».

Common beginner mistakes (and the fix)

Handwriting, print and calligraphy

Printed Persian is usually set in a font based on the naskh style, which is what you see in this article. Calligraphy and many shop signs, book covers and wedding cards use nastaliq, the flowing, slanting style that many Iranians consider the most beautiful way to write Persian. Everyday handwriting sits in between: closer to print in its letter shapes, but quicker, with dots merged into dashes and some teeth flattened. As a learner, model your handwriting on clear print and enjoy nastaliq as something to read and admire later. Our introduction to Persian calligraphy explains the styles.

Typing in Persian instead of writing by hand

Most real-life Persian is typed: messages, emails, searches. You can type Persian without installing anything using our free online Persian keyboard. To add a Persian layout to your phone or computer, see our step-by-step guide to setting up a Persian keyboard. Your device will choose the right letter form automatically, so typing is a good way to check your spelling while your handwriting catches up.

Three things to watch when typing:

• Choose the Persian layout, not Arabic. An Arabic keyboard produces Arabic versions of ye and kâf that look slightly different and can break searches. If your ی shows dots at the end of a word, you are on the wrong layout.
• Use the half space. Words like می‌خواهم (mikhâham, I want) and کتاب‌ها need the zero-width non-joiner, not a normal space and not nothing.
• Do not stay in Finglish. Writing Persian in Latin letters (“salam, chetori?”) is common in chats, and it is fine for a start, but it will not teach you the script. If you only know the Latin spelling, our Finglish to Persian converter turns it into Persian script so you can see and copy it; read more about Finglish and when Iranians use it.

A simple 7-day plan

1. Day 1: Direction, baseline, and the non-joiners ا د ذ ر ز ژ و. Write در, زرد, روز.
2. Day 2: The tooth family ب پ ت ث plus ن ی. Write بابا, نان, سیب.
3. Day 3: ج چ ح خ and س ش. Write چای, خانه, دست.
4. Day 4: ک گ ل م and the لا ligature. Write کتاب, گل, سلام.
5. Day 5: ف ق ع غ ه. Write عشق, ماه, شهر.
6. Day 6: The rarer letters ص ض ط ظ, numbers and punctuation.
7. Day 7: Copy a short paragraph, then write three sentences about yourself without looking.

This is the same order our blog post on how to read and write Persian in 7 days follows, and the workbook of the same name gives you tracing pages and exercises for each day if you prefer working on paper.

Common questions

Is Farsi written right to left?

Yes. Persian letters and words run from right to left, and books open from the side English readers think of as the back. Numbers are the exception: digits inside a sentence are written left to right.

Is Farsi hard to write?

Less than it looks. There are 32 letters, but they fall into about 18 shapes that differ by dots, and the four forms of each letter mostly add or remove a connecting stroke. Once you know the seven non-joiners, the joining rules are regular.

How long does it take to learn to write in Persian?

With 15 to 30 minutes of daily practice, most learners can write all the letters and simple words within one to two weeks. Fluent, quick handwriting takes longer and comes from writing real sentences regularly.

Is Persian writing the same as Arabic?

Persian uses a modified Arabic script: the same joining system and most of the same letters, plus four extra letters (پ چ ژ گ) and some differences in shapes such as ی and ک. The languages themselves are unrelated; Persian is Indo-European.

Do Persian letters have capital letters?

No. Persian has no capital letters. Instead, each letter changes shape according to whether it starts, sits in the middle of or ends a connected piece.

Can I write Farsi in English letters?

Many Iranians do in casual chats; it is called Finglish or Pinglish. There is no fixed spelling, though, and it is no substitute for the script if you want to read signs, books or anything formal.

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