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Braille Reference Sheet By Raquel Feeney The purpose of creating the Braille
Reference Sheet in this format was to fit as much information on one page as
possible. As a student learning
braille, I frequently needed to look up a letter or contraction.
After weeks of looking things up in my braille dictionary or in my
textbook, I started to create little flashcards with basic, important
information on it. These flash cards
eventually became so crammed with little handwritten dots that they became
illegible and useless. So, slowly I
started to alphabetize and organize my notes in a way that would make them more
accessible. Trial and error eventually led me to the current table format with
rows and columns to separate each letter. I
put the reference sheet to use on a regular basis and over time, with
suggestions from my colleagues, I made lots of changes to it.
Each change made the reference sheet easier to use, more compact, or
simply more aesthetically pleasing. The
current version of it seems to be the one that
my colleagues and I are happiest with.
Sometimes it might seem as if an entry would be better written in another
way. Most likely, it was not done that way, because I came to the conclusion
(along with input from many others) that it was best left as it was. The Braille
Reference Sheet is quite helpful for students, teachers, and parents
learning braille. People who use
braille on a regular basis, might not need to look up individual letters and
basic contractions – however, as a 3rd year teacher of students who
are blind and visually impaired (who has just gotten my first student who uses
braille), I always keep this sheet handy. The Braille Reference Sheet
has 10 columns with the following headings: letter, whole word signs, dot 5
words, short form words, part word signs, “and, for, of, the, with”, dot 4,
5 words, dot 4, 5, 6 words, lower signs, and, final letter.
Down the left-hand side of the sheet there are 33 rows with letters and
contractions listed alphabetically and common letter contractions such as ‘ch’,
‘sh’, and ‘st’. At the
bottom of the second page, also listed alphabetically, is a list of common
punctuation marks. Starting at the left and going
across the “B” row, one can see the letter b on its own (b).
This is simply the way the letter b should be written in a word.
The following column is entitled
“whole word sign” and has the word “but” written under letter b.
This means that the letter b, used on it’s own, represents the whole
word “but” - without spelling it out using the letters “b-u-t”.
NB: in row “E” the whole word sign for “en” is also included
there alphabetically because I did not want to use up an entire row simply for
the “en” contraction. Thus, the
sign for “en” (demonstrated in the “lower signs” column) when written on
it’s own, represents the word “enough.” Column 3 is “dot 5 words”
which, in the “B” row is blank. This
means that “dot 5” followed by the letter B does not represent any single
word. Down below in the same column
under the letter d one can see that the dot 5 followed by the letter d
represents the word “day” and under letter k the dot 5 followed by that
letter represents the word ‘knowledge.’ In row B under the “short form
words” column, nine words are listed in their short form followed by the
entire spelled out word in parentheses. For
example: bl (blind). This means that
the letters “bl” written on their own, represent the word ‘blind’.
Also in this column are some short form words that have bold and
underlined letters; for example: bec (because).
This means that the letters be should be represented by a
single sign and the letter c should be written normally.
So, looking across the entire B row one has to find the contraction for
the letters be (under
the column entitled “lower signs”) and use that contraction in lieu of the
two letters. So, in this case, the
word “because” should be written as follows: 2c.
So, anytime two or more letters are written in bold print and are
underlined, this means those letters should not be spelled out but rather the
contraction for those letters should be used, i.e., be, st,
er, ch, con, one, ou,
the, th, and it. There is only one “Part Word
Sign” that begins with the letter b, which is “ble”.
When spelling out a word that contains those three letters, the
contraction should be used in lieu of the letters b-l-e.
For example, the word ‘table’ should be brailled as such: ta#. “And,
for, of, the, with” column is dedicated to only those five words which have
their own signs. Those signs can be
found alphabetically by their first letters.
That is, the sign for “and” can be found under that column in row
“a”, the sign for “with” can be found in row “w”, and so on. Dot 4, 5
column represents contractions for only the following words: those, these, upon,
word, and whose. “These” is
represented by dots 4 and 5 followed by the contraction for “the”, i.e., ~!. Dot 4, 5, 6 column represents
contractions for the words cannot, had, many, spirit, their, and world.
“Cannot” is represented by dots 4,5, and 6 followed by the letter
“c”: _c. The column entitled “lower
signs” lists the signs for 18 words and part words that only use the bottom
four dots: 2, 3, 5 and 6. Many of
these words are represented by their first letter,
which is then “dropped”; for example, “gg” is written with a
dropped g, and “his” is written with a dropped h.
However, this is not the case for the words “to”, “was”, and
“were”. These three words have
their own dropped signs. The last column, “final letter”, lists 14 contractions that come at the end of words such as “ment”, “ound”, and “tion”. So the word “nation”, for example, would be brailled with the letter “n” followed by the final letter contraction for “ation”: n,n. Finally, at the very bottom of the
table, common punctuation marks have been listed alphabetically along with
numbers 1-9 and 0. Numbers can be
written as I have listed them (1-9 represented by dropped letters “a”
through “i” and zero represented by a dropped letter j) or they can be
represented simply with the number sign followed by the letters “a” through
“i” and number sign followed by the letter “j” for zero. The Braille Reference Sheet is being published as a double-sided, single page for the convenience of the user. Please remove it from this publication and consider laminating it for durability. Perhaps copy it and share it with your friends, families, and colleagues. Please do not hesitate to contact me with your comments or questions. I will be happy to try out new ideas in future reference sheet editions. Click Here to Download the Microsoft Word version of the Braille Reference Sheet |