Scandinavian Braille is a

braille Braille ( , ) is a Tactile alphabet, tactile writing system used by blindness, blind or visually impaired people. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displays that connect to computers and smartphone device ...

alphabet used, with differences in orthography and punctuation, for the languages of the mainland

Nordic countries The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; ) are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe, as well as the Arctic Ocean, Arctic and Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic oceans. It includes the sovereign states of Denm ...

: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish. In a generally reduced form it is used for Greenlandic. Scandinavian Braille is very close to

French Braille French Braille is the original braille alphabet, and the basis of :Innovative braille scripts, almost :French-ordered braille scripts, all others. The collation, alphabetic order of French has become the basis of the international braille conven ...

, with slight modification of some of the accented letters, and optional use of the others to transcribe foreign languages.

Alphabet

The braille letters for the French print vowels ''â, œ, ä'' are used for the print vowels ''å, ö/ø, ä/æ'' of the Scandinavian alphabets. Each language uses the letters that exists in its inkprint alphabet. Thus, in numerical order, the letters are: : Greenlandic Braille uses a subset of these letters, ''a e f g i j k l m n o p q r s t u v'', though the rest of the Scandinavian alphabet is available when needed. For foreign accented letters,

assignments are used.

Numbers

Digits are the first ten letters of the alphabet, and numbers are marked by , as in

English Braille English Braille, also known as ''Grade 2 Braille'', is the braille alphabet used for English. It consists of around 250 letters ( phonograms), numerals, punctuation, formatting marks, contractions, and abbreviations (logograms). Some English ...

Punctuation

Punctuation differs slightly between each country, but this is unlikely to impede understanding. ;Single punctuation The ellipsis is thus . Finnish ! is not a copy error. It is the reverse of the found in all other Nordic countries, though the latter is the + sign in Finnish mathematical notation just as it is in those other countries. Finnish punctuation is used for Swedish text in Finland. In Swedish Braille, there is also for the pipe, , , and for the bullet, •. ;Paired punctuation At least in Norwegian Braille, the braces are ....

Formatting

Given the poor coverage, it is not clear how compatible formatting is between countries. (See Estonian Braille for formatting in an orthography with similar punctuation to Finnish and Swedish.) In Swedish Braille, is used to capitalize an entire word, and to capitalize several words. The sequences and are likewise used to italicize and bold several words. The end of any of these is marked with , for example ... for caps, ... for italics, and ... for bold. Also in Swedish (and perhaps the others), the auxiliary parentheses ... are used to add comments that appear only in the braille text, such as a description of a picture in the print text being transcribed.

References

Punktskriftsalfabet
(Braille alphabet in Swedish) *Sjondepilin.fo "Tá tú hittir blind fólk" (Braille alphabet in Faroese

*Íslenska blindraleturs stafrófið (Braille alphabet in Icelandic

External links

''Håndbok i litterær punktskrift''
("Manual of literary Braille", in Norwegian)
''Kortskrift i norsk punktskrift'', KS04
(abbreviations in Norwegian Braille, in Norwegian)
''Svenska skrivregler för punktskrift''
("Swedish writing-rules for Braille", in Swedish) {{Braille French-ordered braille alphabets