Quotation marks, hyphen and dash, parentheses, colon, semicolon and slash.
Quotation marks open and close with different cells: the opening quotation mark is dots 2, 3, 6 and the closing quotation mark is dots 3, 5, 6.
Remember: the opening quotation mark shares its cell with the question mark. At the start of a word it is a quotation mark; at the end, a question mark.
The hyphen is one cell (dots 3, 6). The dash is two cells: dot 6, then dots 3, 6.
Parentheses take two cells each: dot 5, then dots 1, 2, 6 to open and dot 5, then dots 3, 4, 5 to close. If an older braille book uses one cell for both, it was written in the older American code; the United States has used UEB since 2016.
The colon is dots 2, 5, the semicolon dots 2, 3, and the slash is two cells: dots 4, 5, 6, then dots 3, 4.
Each example is shown cell by cell, with what each cell stands for underneath.
Braille is read by touch and written dot by dot. Recreate each character below in the writer. The best way to make it stick.
Character 1 of 7
Keys F D S and J K L (or 1–6) raise dots · Enter checks
Finish writing the characters above, then this practice activity will help it stick.
Tip You can now read any uncontracted sentence: letters, capitals, numbers and punctuation.