Book writing software for writing a novel in Pashto

Why Galley is the right book writing software for a novel in Pashto

Pashto rides the Arabic script and adds seven letters to it: ټ ډ ړ ږ ښ ګ ڼ. That is the whole test of whether a tool actually supports Pashto or merely renders Arabic. A face cut for Arabic alone will not carry them, and a book that loses ښ is not a book. All three faces on Galley’s shelf carry the Pashto set, and Scheherazade New, which comes from SIL and was built to reach the languages that borrow the Arabic script, has the deepest coverage of the three.

The second thing is the print pipeline. Arabic-script shaping in a PDF is where most tools fake it, mapping letters into a legacy character block and looking those up in the font. Galley shapes with the book’s own script and direction passed through, which is what a joined script needs on a fixed page.

The third is the market: Amazon does not list Pashto in any format. So the print-ready PDF and the valid EPUB are the whole product.

Everything else is the same app: a true book page at your trim, the story bible beside the manuscript, a print-ready PDF and a valid EPUB.

How Pashto gets typeset

Direction is a print decision. The recto is the left-hand page, margins and running heads mirror with the gutter, and both the PDF and the EPUB declare right-to-left page progression.

Letters join, so headings do not letter-space. Tracking a cursive script open breaks the join.

There is no italic, and that is correct, and not a gap.

There is no hyphenation and no kashida justification. Set a Pashto book ragged right, which is what justification being off by default already gives you.

Harakat fold in search, so a word is findable whether or not you typed the vowel marks.

The typefaces you get for Pashto

Three Naskh faces, all under the SIL Open Font License.

Scheherazade New is the one to reach for first in Pashto, because SIL built it for exactly the letters Arabic-only faces skip.

Amiri is the literary choice, modelled on the Bulaq Press types of nineteenth-century Cairo.

Noto Naskh Arabic is the safe default with broad coverage.

The typeface documentation lists every face by language.

Exports for a Pashto novel

• Print-ready PDF at your trim, mirrored the correct way, shaped properly, font embedded.
• EPUB 3 with your cover, tagged ps, with right-to-left page progression.
• Store-ready EPUBs for Kobo and Apple Books.
• Word and Markdown for an editor or an archive.
• Manuscript format, double-spaced, running right to left.
• A proofreading PDF two pages to a sheet, and a large print PDF.
• A watermarked copy per beta reader.

The Amazon-shaped tools switch off on a Pashto book and say why.

Pashto punctuation

Pashto uses the Arabic comma ،, question mark ؟ and full stop ۔, all ordinary characters that survive typing and both exports. The digits are Arabic-Indic on screen and in the print PDF, falling back to Western digits in the Word export only.

Chapter headings are still the English default. Getting the Pashto convention right wants a native reader, so the app lets you title chapters yourself. If you write in Pashto and want to tell me what it should be, say so.

How long a Pashto novel is

Galley counts words, live, per chapter and per book, and projects a page count at your trim, which is the number a printer works from. The word count to page count converter helps here.

Trim sizes for a Pashto book

Six standards, from mass market at 4.25×6.87 inches to Royal at 6.14×9.21. South Asian publishing commonly uses demy and crown octavo, near the Digest at 5.5×8.5 inches. The trim size comparison and the spine width calculator do the maths.

Metadata and the copyright page

Every field detects its own direction, so a Pashto title and a Latin ISBN both come out right. The copyright page writes itself from what you filled in.

Translating into or out of Pashto

A translation in Galley is its own book: its own language, its own typeface shelf, its own ISBN, its own cover, still linked to the original, with the editor split so the original sits read-only beside what you write.

There are pages on writing a novel in Arabic, writing a novel in Persian and writing a novel in Sindhi.

No machine touches the prose. Galley has no AI anywhere near your writing.

Self-publishing and traditional publishing in Pashto

Self-publishing. Amazon is closed, so print goes to a regional printer or IngramSpark and the ebook goes to Google Play, Apple Books or Kobo.

Traditional publishing. Pashto publishing runs through regional houses and literary societies. The submission package assembles the synopsis, the bio and the opening chapters.

The same book exports both. The longer arguments are in Galley for self-publishing and Galley for traditional publishing.

Where to go next

• Writing software for novelists who don’t write in English covers every script Galley sets.
• Book design and typefaces lists every face by language.
• Series and translations covers the full language list.
• EPUB vs print PDF explains what each format can do.