Re: REPLY: Foriegn lang. credit for braille / FW: Braille...

From: Scott Horne (shorne@metaphasetech.com)
Date: Thu Sep 23 1999 - 13:59:25 EDT


As has been pointed out, this discussion is losing its relevance
to the mailing list.

James E. Agenbroad wrote:
>
> > Sixty-three, rather. The blank cell is not used, for obvious reasons.
>
> JEA: Probably because Chinese is often written without spaces the 1990
> "World Braille Survey" says the blank cell is used in Hong Kong for
> Cantonese to represnt a tone.

In context, of course. No blind person feeling a fresh piece of paper
would think that someone had written tone-marks all over the page.

> Braille manuals
> probably do not do so but one could say that the blank cell is
> generally used to represent the space between words.

Yes, and also for alignment and various other purposes. Braille
codes tend to be quite strict about the use of the blank cell.

> (I wonder if
> for brevity Braille omits the blank cell after periods, question and
> exclamation marks?)

The braille code for English that is used in the US leaves a single
blank cell after those punctuation marks and most others (commas,
colons, &c).

Scott Horne



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