 | This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: The article should primarily describe UEB, not EBAE. (June 2022) |
| English Braille Grade-2 Braille British Revised Braille | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Script type | (non-linear) |
Time period | 1902 |
Print basis | English alphabet |
| Languages | English |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | night writing
|
Child systems | unified international braille Unified English Braille Irish Braille |
| Unicode | |
| U+2800 to U+283F | |
English Braille, also known as Grade 2 Braille,[1] is the braille alphabet used for English. It consists of around 250 letters (phonograms), numerals, punctuation, formatting marks, contractions, and abbreviations (logograms). Some English Braille letters, such as ⠡ ⟨ch⟩,[2] correspond to more than one letter in print.
There are three levels of complexity in English Braille. Grade 1 is a nearly one-to-one transcription of printed English and is restricted to basic literacy. Grade 2, which is nearly universal beyond basic literacy materials, abandons one-to-one transcription in many places (such as the letter ⠡ ⟨ch⟩) and adds hundreds of abbreviations and contractions. Both Grade 1 and Grade 2 have been standardized. "Grade 3" is any of various personal shorthands that are almost never found in publications. Most of this article describes the 1994 American edition of Grade 2 Braille, which is largely equivalent to British Grade 2 Braille.[3] Some of the differences with Unified English Braille, which was officially adopted by various countries between 2005 and 2012, are discussed at the end.
Braille is frequently portrayed[by whom?] as a re-encoding of the English orthography used by sighted people. However, braille is a separate writing system, not a variant of the printed English alphabet.[4]
- ^ "English Braille" normally refers to Grade 2. The more basic Grade 1 Braille, which is only used by learners, is specified as "English Braille, Grade 1" (Braille Through Remote Learning).
- ^ ⟨Angle brackets⟩ will be used to indicate transcriptions of braille letters into the Latin alphabet.
- ^ compare American (BANA) here with British (BAUK) here.
- ^ Daniels & Bright, 1996, The World's Writing Systems, p 817–818