Converting Right to Left text

Some students (mainly Arabic speakers) are submitting homework which is word-processed in a program using Right to left (RTL) script. This will cause you problems if you want to mark/give feedback with Comments or Footnotes.

One simple solution is to copy the text, open a new document, use Paste Special and choose Unformatted Text. This will strip out all formatting, including text direction.

Another solution, which we can also give to students, is to put RTL and LTR buttons on your Quick Access Toolbar in Windows 2007. 

You can find detailed instructions at 

http://libroediting.com/2012/07/11/what-to-do-if-my-comment-boxes-are-running-right-to-left/

This means that when you open a Word document submitted in RTL by a student, you can switch it to LTR by clicking on the LTR button.

________________________________

UPDATE JAN 2015

not entirely successful for the whole text! However, it will work on changing text direction in a Comment Box, which is where we started.

________________________________

I have tried it on one document – not a comprehensive test I admit! – and it works. I’ll also give it to some of my students to try out. If it is that simple and we can persuade students to use it for submitting homework, this problem should disappear.

David