Use braille while you still can

Braille is an endangered alphabet. Here's a guide to use it while it's still around.

Unified English Braille uses the same braille "cells" used represent the letters of several Europe-based languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, etc).

A key difference is its use of contractions, combinations of braille letters or special characters that make reading and writing braille faster, and fit more content in less space (even contracted braille books are quite large). However, there are many contractions to remember, and they greatly increase the complexity of learning or describing braille in English.

It's used in Australia, Botswana, Canada, Fiji, Ghana, India, Ireland, Kiribati, Malaysia, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, New Zealand, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, the Phillipines, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Tonga, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Vanuatu, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.

Letters

Letter A to J

Braille’s first ten letters use only the top four dots.

Letters K to T

The second set of letters repeats the same dots as letters A to J, but adds the bottom left dot.

Letters U to Z

The end of the alphabet follows the same pattern again, with these characters adding both bottom bottom dots to the letters A to E.

Why is W out of place like this? Blame France; Braille was invented in French, which at the time hadn't adopted the letter. So while braille users still think of the alphabet as A to Z, learners must remember that W is the odd one out. However, once you learn this, all roman alphabet languages use the same pattern.

Letter W

The letter W resembles a J, but adds the bottom right dot, instead of both bottom dots (like it's end-of-of-the-alphabet neighbors). It's weird that way.

Numbers

Basic numbers and math are written by using the number symbol as a prefix. Texts with lots of math is usually done in a specialized braille code called Nemeth Braille.

The Number Sign signals that a number follows.

#
6,023

1 through 0 are letters in disguise. They use A through J, encoded as numbers 1 through 0. A number always follows the number sign (it gets confusing otherwise). Notice these on elevators.

Formatting and Punctuation

Capital and italic letters are created using special characters along with the letters described above.

The capital sign signals that a number follows. Use it once for an initial cap, twice to capitalize the whole word. Three starts an uppercase passage, with two more ending it.

↑
Cap
WORD
CAP IT ALL!

Italics use an italic symbol followed by a second character that indicates the length of italic style use.

italic character
n
italic word
oh!

begin italic passage
end italic passage
as if!

Punctuate sentences by following them with these characters.

.
,
!
?
:
;

Quotes are opening and closing signs that enclose a word or words.

“
”
“ahem”
‘
’
‘true’

Parenthesis and Brackets are opening and closing signs that enclose a word or words.

(
)
(aside)
[
]
[edited]

Hyphens, dashes, apostrophes, asterixes and ellipses can be placed anywhere. An apostrophe is a single dot 3, a hyphen both bottom dots. Make a with an apostrophe followed by a hyphen. An asterix is an apostrophe followed by a low i. An ellipsis, just like print, is three periods in a row.

Currency symbols such as the dollar, British Pound, and yen are created with a currency sign (dot 4), followed by an s, e, l, or y. Hint: think of what the $, €, £, or ¥ symbols most resemble as the print letters S, E, L, and Y.

currency sign
$
€
£
¥

Contractions

To fit more information on the page, English braille uses letters a through z as codes. Depending on the placement of the letter, it will expand to represent a different code. These changes are called contractions. It takes time to learn, but is able to reduce the number of characters down 300%.