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Grade 3 braille

Contents

• Introduction
  • The braille cell
  • Characters
  • Terminology
• Simple groupsigns
• Wordsigns and composite groupsigns
• Shortforms
• Outlining
• Sequencing
• Other rules
  • Formatting
  • Unusual words
  • Special abbreviations
  • Choice of signs
  • Capitalisation
• Numbers
• Proposed extensions
  • Numeric

Introduction

Grade 3 braille builds on Grade 2. Many of the concepts, signs and rules are the same. We mention all the differences below.

The braille cell

A braille cell has six dots arranged in two columns and three rows. We conventionally number the six dots of the braille cell as follows: 1 (top left), 2 (middle left), 3 (bottom left), 4 (top right), 5 (middle right) and 6 (bottom right).

Characters

There are 64 different ways to arrange six dots. This gives us 63 non-space characters and the space character (consisting of a cell with no dots).

Terminology

We may describe a character that uses dots 1 or 4 (or both) as an upper character. We may describe a character that does not use dots 1 or dot 4 (or both) as a lower character.

A simple sign is one consisting of a single braille cell. A composite sign consists of more than one braille cell.

An upper sign contains an upper character. A lower sign contains only lower characters. We may use any number of lower signs together.

A simple groupsign is a braille character that represents a group of letters within a word. A groupsign may have the same meaning wherever you use it in a word or its meaning may vary. If its meaning may vary, we may describe it as initial, medial or terminal, depending on whether the sign may be used at the beginning, strictly inside or at the end of a word, respectively.

We may write a braille character by itself (as a word) to represent a word: this is what we call a simple wordsign.

We call the seven characters in Group 7 righthand characters, because they consist only of dots 4, 5 and 6. These righthand characters may precede any of the other characters to form composite signs.

We use the first four characters in Group 7 to form composite wordsigns. Composite wordsigns represent words or groups of letters and we may use them within a larger word.

We use the last three characters in Group 7 to form composite groupsigns. Composite groupsigns represent groups of letters and we may use them medially or terminally within a word.

A shortform is a combination of braille signs that represents a word in an abbreviated form.

Outlining is the selective omission of the vowels A, E, I, O and U from between two consonants of a word.

Sequencing is when we write two or more words without an intervening space: this creates a word sequence.

Simple groupsigns

A simple groupsign is a braille character that represents a group of letters within a word. A groupsign may have the same meaning wherever you use it in a word or its meaning may vary. If its meaning may vary, we may describe it as initial, medial or terminal, depending on whether the sign may be used at the beginning, strictly inside or at the end of a word, respectively.

Note that:

• Square brackets [ ] indicate that the sign in this context is not a groupsign and the contents of the square brackets serve as a reminder of the meaning (or one of the meanings) of this sign in this context. This avoids having empty cells in the table.
• (syllable) indicates that we may only use the groupsign when it forms a complete syllable.
• (extendable) indicates that we may follow the terminal groupsign with the composite groupsigns NESS and MENT or with a simple sign necessary to complete the word. Examples: backWARDs, FORWARDED, RIGHTeOUSLY, RIGHTeOUSNESS.
• (end of syllable) indicates that we may only use the medial groupsign at the end of a syllable.
• (sequenced) indicates that the initial sign actually represents a wordsign that is allowed to precede the following word without a space.

Simple initial groupsigns may follow each other. Examples: DISBElIEf, DISRESPectful, INDEfINaBLE, INCOMpARaBLE, INCONSTant, OUTDIStANCE, RECOMmENd, RECONSTruct, REINSPIRE, UNDISmAYED, UNRESPonsIVE, UNSPoTTED.

We must not use the terminal groupsigns GE, TE, CE or CY when they may be mistaken for punctuation.

For words that end in "ies", we tend to use the terminal groupsign ES to give iES rather than the medial groupsign IE to give IEs.

Wordsigns

We may write a braille character by itself (as a word) to represent a word: this is what we call a simple wordsign.

We call the seven characters in Group 7 righthand characters, because they consist only of dots 4, 5 and 6. These righthand characters may precede any of the other characters to form composite signs.

We use the first four characters in Group 7 to form composite wordsigns. Composite wordsigns represent words or groups of letters and we may use them within a larger word.

We use the last three characters in Group 7 to form composite groupsigns. Composite groupsigns represent groups of letters and we may use them medially or terminally within a word.

Note that:

• (rarely used) indicates that we do not usually use the composite groupsign FUL, because we may outline (see below) "ful" as "fl" and so we take ;l ⠰⠇ (dots 56 l) within a word to indicate the omission of a vowel (or the letter y) between the letters u and l.
• (syllable) indicates that we may only use the composite wordsigns PRE and PRO when these letters form a complete syllable.
• (sequenced) indicates that when we use the simple wordsigns TO and BY (and also 96 ⠔⠖ (lower i lower f) INTO) we must omit the space before the next word.

We must not use lower wordsigns when our reader could reasonably mistake them for punctuation.

We may form the ING form of a composite wordsign ending in the letter E by simply adding a letter G. Examples (this technique could be used with these words): BECOME, BELIEVE, bOUNCE, CHANGE, CHARGE, CONTINUE, COURSE, ENCLOSE, eSTRANGE, HOUSE, IMPROVE, INCLOSE, JUDGE, LEAVE, LIVE, LOVE, PLEASE, SIDE, TIME, WHILE.

Shortforms

A shortform is a combination of braille signs that represents a word in an abbreviated form.

Note that:

• The Grade 2 shortform fST for "first" is not used in Grade 3, where there is a composite wordsign available for "first" and we would read fST as "fast", due to outlining.
• The Grade 2 shortforms grt and tgr are redundant in Grade 3, because we have shorter composite wordsigns for these words. Furthermore, we would read strins such as grtED and grtER as "grated" and "grater" respectively, due to outling.

We may form the ING form of a shortform word ending in the letter E by simply adding a letter G. Examples: ackg, brlg, grg, BEllg, vlg.

Outlining

Outlining is the selective omission of the vowels A, E, I, O and U from between two consonants of a word.

We may omit the vowel A from a word of one syllable. We may omit the vowel I from a word of one syllable where it precedes the groupsign GH. Similarly for the first syllable of a word of more than one syllable.

We may not omit a vowel when:

• There are two or more vowels together.
• The vowel precedes the letter Y.
• This would bring together two consonants that occur together frequently in English.
• The vowel is a syllable by itself (sometimes A is an exception to this).
• The vowel bears the principle stress.
• This would result in an ambiguity (in "sad" we may not omit the vowel A).

Sequencing

Sequencing is when we write two or more words without an intervening space: this creates a word sequence.

1. We may omit the space after the wordsigns AND, FOR, OF, THE, WITH, IT and AS, provided that:
   • The next word is not TO or BY.
   • Except for the wordsign THE, the next word does not begin with BE, CON or DIS.
2. We may omit the space before the wordsigns AND, FOR, OF, THE and WITH when the preceding word is a wordsign.
3. We may usually write the lower linking wordsigns (AM, BE, IS, ARE, BEEN, WERE, HIS and WAS) without spaces before or after them. They should not begin or end a word sequence, unless the sequence begins "AM I" or IS or ARE precede a wordsign.
4. We may omit the space after the wordsigns AN and AT.
5. The wordsigns COME, ENOUGH and IN may precede any (simple or composite) wordsign without a space.
6. The wordsigns A and HAVE may follow any word without a space.
7. Most of the time, we may omit the space after a composite wordsign. We use a space when:
   • The next word is TO or BY.
   • The next word begins with one of the lower initial groupsigns BE, CON or DIS.
8. We never sequence the word "o".
9. We must not omit spaces when doing so would create ambiguity in that particular context.

Examples (here we use the underline character _ to indicate where we may omit a space):

• THE_CHILD_WAS_NOT aBLE TO_DO_THE_hmeWORK_SHE_HAD_BEEN_GIVEN
• THE_OTHER_CHn_HAVE NOT_BEEN_tryING VERY hARd
• HERE_AND_THERE_THEY_fOUND THE_trEAsURE
• THEY_WERE_TO_COME_INTO_HIS_HOUSE_OUT_OF_THE_raIN AT_laST
• IT_WAS_BY_aCCidENt, THEY_WERE_TO_COME_IN_THE_EVENING

Other rules

Formatting

Rather than starting a new line and indenting with two spaces, we may simply uses three spaces to separate paragraphs.

Unusual others

We usually may not use Grade 3 for unusual spellings, dialect, proper names and foreign words. However, we may use Grade 3 with words of this sort that occur frequently, once they have become familiar to our reader. Alternatively, we may use special abbreviations.

Special abbreviations

We may introduce special abbreviations for long or common words that appear in our text. We should introduce these in a special note where our reader should easily notice it. For example, we could decide to write "pARliaMENT" as p>' ⠏⠜⠄ (p AR dot 3). If we decide to use just an initial letter as an abbreviation, we should precede it with the letter sign ; ⠰ (dots 56).

Choice of signs

When we have a choice between two or more ways of writing a word with equal brevity, we use the one that is clearest, which usually means we choose the form with the fewest alternative meanings.

Capitalisation

We may usually omit the capital sign , ⠠ (dot 6), unless it is necessary to give a particular effect or emphasis or to clearly identify an usual proper noun.

Numbers

We may use the 50 characters in Groups 1 to 5 after the numeral sign # ⠼ (dots 3456) to represent the numbers 1 to 50.

Note that we may also use numeral sign j #j ⠼⠚ (dots 3456 j) to mean 0, but please see the proposed extensions below.

The following signs have special meanings when we use them after the numeral sign # ⠼ (dots 3456).

Proposed extensions

I have proposed the small extensions to Grade 3 in this section. They have no official standing, but please feel free to use them. I would also be interested in hearing about your own proposed extensions to Grade 3.

Numeric

The following signs have special meanings when we use them after the numeral sign # ⠼ (dots 3456).

We may omit any thousands separator before the sign for 000.

We may omit a numerator of 1 when writing a fraction with the / sign.

This page was last modified on 16 November 2011.