German Braille
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Through Braille
Letters
In numerical order by decade, the letters are:
The generic accent sign, ⠈, is used with foreign names such as ⠍⠕⠇⠊⠈⠑⠗⠑ Molière that have accented letters not found in German. There are numerous contractions and abbreviations.
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Punctuation
Punctuation is as follows:
Only the first asterisk is marked with dot 6, so print *** is in braille ⠠⠔⠔⠔.
⠴ is the Artikel sign, marking an article of a document.
For the brackets of phonetic transcription, German Braille uses a modified form, ⠰⠶...⠰⠶.
Additional punctuation and symbols, especially mathematical, are explained in the external reference below.
Numbers
Numbers are introduced with the sign ⠼. They are dropped to decade 5 for ordinals and for the denominator of fractions.
So, for example, ⠼⠙ is ⟨4⟩, while ⠼⠲ is ⟨4.⟩ (4th), and ⠼⠉⠲ is ⟨3⁄4⟩́.
The percent sign requires the number sign even after a number: ⠼⠃⠼⠴ ⟨2%⟩; otherwise it would look like the (undefined) fraction 2⁄0.
In a compound fraction, a repeat of the number sign separate the units from the fraction: ⠼⠁⠼⠁⠆ ⟨1+1⁄2⟩.
Formatting
The emphasis sign (for italics, underline, or bold) is marked with an extra point, ⠠⠸, when it occurs in the middle of a word. It is doubled, ⠸⠸, when more than one word is emphasized, in which case the ending sign ⠠⠄ will be required at the end of the last word.
The all-caps sign is used for initialisms and the like. Doubled, it is used for all-cap text, such as titles, and the same ending sign, ⠠⠄, is used. Names with initials, such as J.S. Bach, do not require the cap sign. The lower-case sign ⠠ is used to mark mixed case or exceptions to expected capitalization; as such, it replaces the apostrophe that sets off the plural -s in print:
- ⠘⠊⠉⠠⠎ ⟨IC's⟩, ⠘⠍⠨⠓⠵ ⟨MHz⟩, ⠨⠛⠍⠃⠘⠓ ⟨GmbH⟩.
(Note the initialism sign can be used for a single letter.)
Lower-case metric units are marked as lower-case: ⠠⠅⠘⠺ ⟨kW⟩. This is useful, as it ends the scope of the number sign ⠼:
- ⠼⠁⠉⠚⠠⠓⠨⠏⠁ ⟨130 hPa⟩, ⠼⠁⠉⠚⠠⠅⠘⠧⠁ ⟨130 kVA⟩.