That would be me :) No, the preceding letter matters. Some letters (د،ذ،ر،ز،ؤ) have no medial form-- they take the terminal form instead, and the following lett

That would be me :) No, the preceding letter matters. Some letters (د،ذ،ر،ز،ؤ) have no medial form-- they take the terminal form instead, and the following letter takes the initial form. There are patterns (17 by my count?) among which letters differ only minorly, so it's not as bad as learning four forms for each letter, but there are some additional gotchas too. For example "ل-ا" ("laa") is always written as a single character "lamalif": لا. (Bonus knowledge: that's also the word for "no". You can see it at the beginning of the Shahada: ...لا إله إلا الله <- "There is no god but God..." etc.)