For effecting the automatic selection of Arabic character forms for display/printing of Arabic script, the structure of Arabic words is defined in terms of the respective shapes of the characters, and then production rules are derived to logically effect selection of an appropriate variant shape for any given character. By the disclosed teaching, a method and system are defined capable of handling not only the usual text, but also initials, acronyms, vowels, compound shapes, special end-of-word and stand-alone shapes.