Nasri Khattar

Khattar drew inspiration from old letters, which were separated. He gave each letter of the Arabic abjad a single form instead of the four possible forms of an Arabic letter depending on its position within the word: initial, medial, final, and isolated. This helped reduce the number of glyphs necessary to print Arabic to 33. For each letter, he combined elements of the glyph for the individual form with elements of the glyphs for connected forms. He said that his writing system was economical because it would save paper and that it was easy to read and learn, but that it was for printing only—which is to say that handwriting would not change. His idea was patented in 1947 and launched in 1957. In 2013, the type foundry 29LT released a set of fonts reviving Nasri Khattar's Unified Arabic project after his daughter Camille Khattar Hedrick entrusted the firm to do so.

• Name — Nasri Khattar • Native Name — نصري خطار • Born — 1911 • Died — 1998 • Education — Yale School of Architecture

• الأبجدية الموحدة لتسهيل الحروف الهجائية – نصري خطار- 1947. • شوف بابا شوف – نصري خطار- 1955