unusual words

[Bettie Downing]

According to BANA's "The Evolution of Braille" we are trying to be true to the print but it is becoming increasingly difficult. Here is one horrible example: A book by Oliver Sacks called "Musicophilia" where the "S" is written as a musical Segno sign, every "i" has a Fermata sign over the top of it and the "p" is a half note with the stem pointed down. What in the world is a transcriber to do?

[JanaBrailles]

Hello there,

Thank you for your question. Do these symbols only appeaar in the title or do they appear throughout the book? Can you attach a scan of the page showing these marks? I will be answering this post for Saralyn but need to know whether it is justthe title or throughout the book.

Thanks,
Jana

[Bettie Downing]

It's only on the book jacket. I tried to copy the photo from Amazon since I don't have a scanner, but I couldn't make it work properly. Sorry.

[JanaBrailles]

If those funny symbols only appear on the jacket, you would braille them as accented letters (with a dot 4 preceding the accented letter), according to literary braille. You would have to put in a transcriber's note stating the change. If it was throughout the text, you would assign it a symbol, and place the explanation on the Special Symbols page. If you are brailling this book according to formats, you would need to post your question there ...

In literary braille, no matter what funny symbol is being shown with any of the letters, all are brailled using a dot 4 before the letter marked with an accent or funny symbol in print.

I hope this helps.

Jana

[Author]

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