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English Braille Grade-2 Braille British Revised Braille
Script type	Alphabet (non-linear)
Time period	1902
Print basis	English alphabet
Languages	English
Related scripts
Parent systems	night writing early braille French Braille English Braille
Child systems	unified international braille Unified English Braille Irish Braille
Unicode
Unicode range	U+2800 to U+283F

Template:BrailleChars

English Braille, also known as Grade-2 Braille, is the braille alphabet used for English. It consists of 250 or so letters (phonograms), numerals, punctuation marks, formatting marks, and contractions and abbreviations (logograms). Some English Braille letters, such as ⠡ ⟨ch⟩, 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 in print 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 grades have been standardized. "Grade 3" is not a single system, but any of various personal shorthands. It is almost never found in publications. Most of this article describes the 1994 American edition of Grade-2 Braille; some of the differences with Unified English Braille (officially adopted between 2005 and 2012 by various countries) are discussed at the end.

Braille is frequently portrayed as an encoding of the Latin alphabet used by sighted people. However, for the blind, braille is an independent writing system, not a variant of printed English.

History

Braille was introduced to Britain in 1861. In 1876, a French-based system with a few hundred English contractions and abbreviations was adopted as the predominant script in Great Britain. However, the contractions and abbreviations proved unsatisfactory, and in 1902 the current grade-2 system, called Revised Braille, was adopted in the British Commonwealth. In 1878, the ideal of basing all braille alphabets on the original French order was accepted by Britain, Germany, and Egypt (see International Braille). In the United States, non-braille New York Point, frequency-ordered American Braille, and a reordered variation of English Braille were used. Partially contracted English Braille, Grade 1½, was adopted in 1918, and fully contracted Grade 2, with a few minor concessions to the Americans, was adopted in 1932. The concessions were to swap the British two-dot capital sign with the one-dot emphasis sign, which had generally been omitted anyway (as capitals had been in New York Point), to drop a few religious contractions from general usage, and to introduce a rule stating that contractions and abbreviations should not span 'major' syllable boundaries.

In 1991 , an American proposal was made for Unified English Braille, intended to eliminate the confusion caused by competing standards for academic uses of English Braille. After several design revisions, it has since been adopted by the Commonwealth countries starting in 2005, and by the United States (starting a gradual introduction after 2012). The chief differences with Revised Braille are in punctuation, symbols, and formatting, more accurately following print in matters such as brackets, mathematical notation, and typefaces.

System

The 64 braille patterns are arranged into decades based on numerical order. The first decade are the numerals 1 through 0, which utilize only the top and mid row of the cell; the 2nd through 4th decades are derived from this by adding dots to the bottom now; the 5th decade is created by shifting the 1st decade down. In addition, for each decade there are two additional patterns created from mirror images of top rows, and finally three patterns utilize only the bottom row of the cell (the top-only patterns of the first decade, shifted down two rows). The final, empty cell, ⟨⠀⟩, is used as a space; it has the same width as the other cells.

Cells 1 through 25 plus 40 (w) are assigned to the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet. The other 37 cells, when used at all, are often used for punctuation and are typically assigned different values in different languages. The English grade-two values are as follows; cells with dots on only the right side do not have equivalents in printed English, and are explained in the notes.

	main sequence											shifted right
1st decade	1 · a	2 · b	3 · c	4 · d	5 · e	6 · f	7 · g	8 · h	9 · i	0 · j		(accent)*	(abbrev.)
2nd decade	k	l	m	n	o	p	q	r	s	t		st · /	ar
3rd decade	u	v	x	y	z	and	for	of	the	with		-ing	(num)* · -ble
4th decade	ch	gh	sh	th	wh	ed	er	ou	ow	w		· · (emph)*	(abbrev.)
5th decade	, · -ea-	; · -bb-	: · -cc-	. · -dd-	en	! · -ff-	() · -gg-	? · “	in	”		(abbrev.)	(letter)*
bottom row	’		-									(caps)*	(space)

* Formatting marks, explained below

Abbreviation signs, illustrated below

Abolished in Unified English Braille

The period, ⟨⠲⟩, is distinguished from the decimal point, ⟨⠨⟩. The apostrophe, ⟨⠄⟩, is not used as a quotation mark.

1. "English Braille" normally refers to Grade 2. The more basic Grade-1 Braille, which is only used by new learners, is specified as "English Braille, Grade 1" (Braille Through Remote Learning).
2. ⟨Angle brackets⟩ will be used to indicate transcriptions of braille letters into the Latin alphabet.
3. This is largely equivalent to British Grade-2 Braille; compare American (BANA) here with British (BAUK) here.
4. Daniels & Bright, 1996, The World's Writing Systems, p 817–818
5. ^ War of the Dots
6. Following the order of the English alphabet, ending with wxyz for French xyzç.
7. using only the single-cell contractions
8. Mackenzie, 1953, World Braille Usage, UNESCO