Braille Formats_To Mention or not to Mention on the SSP

[Mary Mosley]

Braille Formats_To Mention or not to Mention on the SSP

In the NBA Winter Bulletin 2024 article “Rules of Unified English Braille, Section 3” by Julie Sumwalt, on page 43, it says (The quotation marks around mention and use are important, though the author is unsure of the reason.) In the example on page 44 the word “mention” is included in the SSP description.

Going back to the Fall 2017 Bulletin, the Braille example on page 30 shows only “Dot locator; precedes symbols in a list” and the commentary to the example states, “Note the lack of terms like “dot locator for ‘mention’” and “simple” arrows. That is transcriber lingo, best avoided when introducing symbols and indicators.”

With exceptions in the Fall 2015, Winter 2015-2016 and Spring 2018 Bulletins, every Braille example in the Bulletins, as well as in the special symbols example in BF on page 2-52, the word mention is not used. Also, in the .brf editions of the Bulletin going back to 2022 the word mention in not used on the SSPs either.

Which is the conventional standard; should the words “mention” and “use” be included in the symbols description for the dot locators or should they not?

[Michael Gunner]

Hello Mary,

Thank you for your question. I understand how frustrating it can be to find two different examples for the same guideline. In this case, neither example is incorrect. The general rule for special symbols is to use the wording from the corresponding code, which in this instance is Unified English Braille (UEB). Technically, the word "mention" should be used, as it comes directly from the symbol description in the UEB code book. However, upon further investigation, I discovered that the authors of the Braille Format Guidelines intentionally omitted the word "mention" from the description to ensure that it would fit on a single braille line.

Michael

[Author]

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