The watermarking is a method to achieve the copyright protection of multimedia contents. Among several media, the left documents show very peculiar properties: block/line/word patterning, clear separation between foreground and background areas. So algorithms specific to the text documents are required that meet those properties. This paper proposes a novel watermarking algorithm for the grayscale text document images. The algorithm inserts the watermark signals through the edge direction histograms. A concept of sub-image consistency is developed that the sub-images have similar shapes in terms of edge direction histograms. Using Korean, Chinese, and English document images, the concept is evaluated and proven to be valid over a wide range of document images. To insert watermark signals, the edge direction histogram is modified slightly. The experiments were performed on various document images and the algorithm was evaluated in terms of imperceptibility and robustness.