Contributors

Amir Aharoni provided most of the original technical content. Richard Ishida reorganised the content along standardised lines.

See also the GitHub contributors list for the Hebrew Language Enablement project, and the discussions related to Hebrew script.

About this document

The W3C has to ensure that the needs of scripts and languages around the world are built into technologies such as HTML, CSS, SVG, etc. so that Web pages and eBooks can look and behave as people expect around the world.

The aim of this document is to describe basic requirements for Hebrew script layout and text support on the Web and in eBooks. These requirements provide information for Web technologies such as CSS, HTML and digital publications, and for application developers, about how to support users of Hebrew scripts.

This document should contain no reference to a particular technology. For example, it should not say "CSS does/doesn't do such and such", and it should not describe how a technology, such as CSS, should implement the requirements. It is technology agnostic, so that it will be evergreen, and it simply describes how the script works. The gap analysis document is the appropriate place for all kinds of technology-specific information.

Gap analysis

This document is pointed to by a separate document, Hebrew Gap Analysis, which describes gaps in support for Hebrew on the Web, and prioritises and describes the impact of those gaps on the user.

Wherever an unsupported feature is indentified through the gap analysis process, the requirements for that feature need to be documented. This document is where those requirements are described.

Other related resources

The Language enablement index points to this document and others, and provides a central location for developers and implementers to find information related to various scripts.

The W3C also maintains a tracking system that has links to github issues in W3C repositories. There are separate links for (a) requests from developers to the user community for information about how scripts/languages work, (b) issues raised against a spec, and (c) browser bugs. For example, you can find out what information developers are currently seeking, and the resulting list can also be filtered by script.

Letterform slopes, weights, & italics

The use of italic fonts in Hebrew is controversial. Some designers say that slanted fonts shouldn't be used at all. Some say that only meticulously designed slanted fonts can be used (although this is true also for Latin text).

Slanted fonts are not used in newspapers. Bold type is more likely to be used where English newspapers would use italics, although a different typeface is often used for that.

Bold type can be used for emphasis, or for highlighting specific items in text.

Characters & encoding

Most of the time Hebrew is written without diacritical marks, however there are two notable uses for diacritics:

Vowel diacritics, also known as niqqud or vocalization

The diacritics are not used in most texts, but they are frequently used in texts for children, in poetry, in religious texts, and occasionally in prose and casual writing.

Cantillation, also known as teamim, teamei miqra, or trop

Cantillation marks are used in Biblical texts, usually together with vocalization marks.

Some known issues:

• A text that uses vocalization marks may have to be styled differently from the rest of the text. For example, it may need to use a different font that ensures that the vocalization marks are displayed correctly and clearly (some fonts don't display them well because they are relatively rare). It may also be desirable to show the vocalized text in larger size.
• It is occasionally useful to give the diacritics a different color, for example for the purpose of teaching. For an example of how it would appear, see the Hebrew Wikipedia article Holam, which shows diacritics in a different color using images.

Grapheme/word segmentation & selection

Hebrew text is generally similar to Latin text in this regard. The only issue to note is selecting and moving through text that includes the character maqaf, the Hebrew hyphen. It should behave like a hyphen.

Quotations

According to the section on quotation marks (מירכאות) Academy of the Hebrew Language's punctuation rules, both single and double quotes are acceptable when there's no nesting. When there is nesting, different quotes are supposed to be used for the nested quote. In most of the examples in the document itself, the examples are written with double quotation marks in non-nested quotes and in the outer quote, and with single quotation marks in the nested quote.

Most of the examples in the document use the characters " [U+0022 QUOTATION MARK] and ' [U+0027 APOSTROPHE], however it also notes the following: "In handwriting and in traditional printing the opening quotation marks are low: „–”; ‚–’ On devices that don't support typing the low quotation marks, the high quotation marks are used." Typing the low and high quotation marks is defined in the SI 1452 standard (2012 version) on the keys Alt-;, Alt-L, Alt-., and Alt-,. This standard is implemented in Windows 8, as well as in desktop Linux distributions, and in the Gboard keyboard for Android and iOS.

Text spacing

Hebrew uses letter-spacing (tracking) to emphasise or highlight text (eg. people names, concepts, terms etc.).

Styling initials

Drop caps are used in Hebrew occasionally. If the text uses vowel or cantilation diacritics, all the diacritics on the letter must be included in the drop cap and styled accordingly.