Nicholas Bodley wrote:

>
> Was wondering: Do educated Arabic users follow conventions as well defined
> as users of, say, latin, Greek, or cyrillic alphabets? Being someone who
> knows little about Arabic, I get the impression (probably wrong) that some
> details might be written or omitted at the discretion of the writer.
> Furthermore, considering that there are various styles of Arabic
> (Nastaliq, Naskh, etc.), more or less ornate, it seems possible that
> educated writing might well offer more room for personal choices.

You can't omit the dots from the consonants; they're as much a part of
each letter as is the dot on i.

The one bit not part of the consonantal string that's virtually
unomissible is hamza.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...