The Rules of Unified English Braille

1 The Rules of Unified English Braille Second Edition 2013. Edited by Christine Simpson Published by International Council on English Braille Rules of Unified English Braille ii Copyright: Second Edition 2013 (original 2010), Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities Inc. and International Council on English Braille . This publication is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-No Derivative Works Australia Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA. ISBN: 978-0-9807064-6-8. CONTACT: International Council on English Braille Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities Inc. PO Box 229, Lindisfarne, Tasmania 7015 Australia The official version of The Rules of Unified English Braille is held as a PDF file on the ICEB website.

2 Print and Braille versions of the Rulebook may be downloaded from there. Associated Document: Unified English Braille Guidelines for Technical Material (available for download from the ICEB website). Second Edition 2013. Rules of Unified English Braille iii Table of Contents Table of Contents ..iii Foreword to the First Edition ..xi Foreword to the Second Edition .. xiii Preface to the First Edition .. xv Preface to the Second xix Acknowledgements .. xxi About This xxiii Section 1: 1. Definition of Braille .. 1. Principles of Unified English Braille .. 2. Basic signs found in other forms of English Braille .. 3. Contractions .. 3. Punctuation .. 4. Composition signs (indicators) .. 4. General 4. Technical subjects .. 5. Section 2: Terminology and General Rules .. 7. Terminology .. 7. Contractions summary.

3 9. Following 10. Indicators and modes .. 11. Grades of Braille .. 13. Uncontracted (grade 1) Braille .. 13. Contracted (grade 2) Braille .. 14. Other grades of Braille .. 15. Standing alone .. 15. Section 3: General Symbols and Indicators .. 19. Ampersand @& .. 21. Arrows \ \o \% \[ \+ .. 21. Asterisk "9 dagger @,? and double dagger @,] .. 21. Braille grouping indicators < > .. 23. Bullet _4 .. 24. Caret 24. Commercial at sign @a .. 25. Copyright ^c registered ^r and trademark ^t signs .. 25. Crosses @,? ;x ;,x "8 .. 25. Currency signs @c @e @f @l @n @s @y .. 26. Degrees ^j minutes 7 ' and seconds 77 ,7 .. 27. Ditto mark "1 .. 28. Dot locator for "mention" .= .. 28. Second Edition 2013. Rules of Unified English Braille iv Dot locator for "use" ""= .. 29. Feet 7 ' and inches 77 ,7 .. 30. Female (Venus) ^x and male (Mars) ^y signs.

4 30. Mathematical signs: plus "6 equals "7 multiplication "8. division "/ minus "- ratio 3 proportion 33 less-than @< and greater-than 31. Music accidentals: natural #* flat #< sharp #% .. 32. Number sign (crosshatch, hash, pound sign) _? .. 33. Paragraph ^p and section ^s signs .. 33. Percent sign .0 .. 33. Shapes $ .. 34. Space .. 35. Subscript 5 and superscript 9 36. Tilde (swung dash) @9 .. 36. Transcriber-defined symbols ? #? @#? ^#? _#? "#? .#?.. 37. Transcriber's note indicators .. 39. Section 4: Letters and Their Modifiers .. 41. English 41. 42. Ligatured letters .. 46. Eng and 47. Greek letters .. 48. Section 5: Grade 1 Mode .. 51. Mode indicators .. 51. Grade 1 symbol indicator ;.. 51. Grade 1 word indicator ;; .. 52. Grade 1 passage indicator ;;; .. 52. Grade 1 terminator ;'.

5 53. Numeric indicator #.. 53. Grade 1 mode avoids confusion with contractions .. 54. Grade 1 indicators and capitalisation .. 55. Choice of indicators .. 56. Optional use of the grade 1 indicator .. 57. Use of grade 1 indicators in grade 1 text .. 57. Section 6: Numeric Mode .. 59. Numeric indicators #a #b #c #d #e #f #g #h #i #j #1 # 59. Numeric mode 60. Termination of numeric mode .. 61. Placement of numeric prefix with full stop (period) .. 61. Numeric indicators set grade 1 62. Second Edition 2013. Rules of Unified English Braille v The numeric space "a "b "c "d "e "f "g "h "i "j .. 63. Treatment of dates, time, coinage, etc.. 64. Spaced numeric indicator # .. 65. Numeric passage indicator ## and numeric terminator #' .. 66. Division of a number between 66. Section 7: Punctuation .. 69.

6 General .. 70. Dash, low line (underscore), long dash and hyphen ,- .- ",- - .. 72. Hyphen(s) used as dash .. 73. Ellipsis 444 .. 74. Solidus (forward slash) _/ .. 74. Question mark 8 .. 75. Quotation marks 8 0 ^8 ^0 ,8 ,0 _8 _0. ,7 ' .. 76. Multi-line brackets ,"< ,"> ,.< ,.> ,_< ,_> .. 78. Section 8: Capitalisation .. 79. Use of capitals .. 79. Extent of capitals mode .. 79. Defining a capital letter .. 79. Capitalised word indicator ,, .. 80. Capitalised passage indicator ,,, .. 83. Capitals terminator ,' .. 86. Placement of indicators .. 87. Choice of capitalised indicators .. 87. Accented letters in fully capitalised 89. Section 9: Typeforms .. 91. Deciding when to use typeform indicators .. 92. Typeform symbol indicators .2 ^2 _2 @2 @#2 .. 93. Typeform word indicators .1 ^1 _1 @1 @#1.

7 94. Typeform passage indicators and terminators .7 .'. ^7 ^' _7 _' @7 @' @#7 96. Transcriber-defined typeform indicators @#2 @#1 @#' .. 97. Small capitals .. 98. Placement of typeform symbols with punctuation .. 99. Multiple typeform indicators for the same text .. 101. Typeform passages extending across consecutive same text elements .. 101. Section 10: Contractions .. 103. Alphabetic wordsigns .. 103. Second Edition 2013. Rules of Unified English Braille vi Strong wordsigns ..106. Strong contractions ..108. Strong groupsigns ..109. ch, sh, th, wh, ou, st ..111. ing ..112. Lower wordsigns ..112. be, were, his, enough ..114. in ..114. Lower sign rule ..116. Lower groupsigns ..116. be, con, dis ..116. ea, bb, cc, ff, gg ..119. ea ..121. en, in ..122. Lower sign rule ..123. Initial-letter contractions.

8 124. Dots 45 ..124. Dots 456 ..124. Dot 5 ..124. upon, these, those, whose, there ..127. had ..128. ever ..128. here, one ..130. some ..131. time ..131. under ..132. Final-letter groupsigns ..132. Dots 46 ..132. Dots 56 ..132. ity ..135. ness ..135. Shortforms as words ..136. Shortforms as parts of longer words ..137. Words not appearing on the Shortforms List ..139. Avoiding confusion with Preference ..142. Lower sign rule ..145. Bridging ..146. Compound Aspirated "h" ..146. Second Edition 2013. Rules of Unified English Braille vii Prefixes .. 147. Suffixes .. 150. Diphthongs .. 151. 152. Abbreviations and acronyms .. 152. Computer material .. 155. Dialect .. 156. Fragments of words .. 156. Guidelines when pronunciation or syllabification is unknown .. 157. 158. Medial punctuation and indicators.

9 158. Omitted letters .. 160. Speech hesitation, slurred words, vocal sounds .. 160. Spelling .. 160. Stammering .. 161. Syllabified words .. 162. Word division .. 162. Hyphenated words .. 163. Alphabetic wordsigns and strong wordsigns .. 164. ing .. 165. Lower sign rule .. 165. Dash .. 165. be, con, dis .. 166. ea, bb, cc, ff, gg .. 167. Final-letter groupsigns .. 167. 167. Section 11: Technical 169. Introduction .. 169. Signs of operation and comparison .. 169. Some common operation signs .. 169. Some common comparison signs .. 169. Spacing of operation and comparison signs in non-technical material .. 169. Spacing of operation and comparison signs in technical material .. 170. Fractions .. 170. Simple numeric 170. Mixed numbers .. 171. Fractions written in linear form in print .. 171. General fraction indicators.

10 171. Superscripts and subscripts .. 172. Definition of an item .. 172. Superscripts and subscripts within literary text .. 172. Algebraic expressions involving superscripts .. 173. Square roots and other radicals .. 173. Second Edition 2013. Rules of Unified English Braille viii Square Cube roots etc ..174. Simple Arrows with non-standard shafts ..175. Arrows with non-standard tips ..175. Less common arrows ..176. Shape symbols ..176. Use of the shape termination indicator ..176. Transcriber-defined shapes ..176. Physical enclosure indicator [ ..177. Matrices and Placement of multi-line grouping Chemistry ..178. Use of capital indicators and terminators ..178. Computer notation ..178. Definition of computer notation ..178. Grade of Braille in computer notation ..178. Section 12: Early Forms of 181.]