Learning Grade 2 Braille

Learning Grade 2 Braille, a photo by Cobra_11 on Flickr.

I've started to learn Grade 2 Braille. Braille consists of two grades. Grade 1 is just the alphabet and the punctuation. I've already learnt that, but I'm still practicing it - mainly just building on the speed of reading and writing. I've started to learn Grade 2 now, which consists of abbreviations (it's a kind of a shorthand). Braille characters take up a lot more space than printed letters. Consequently, you can only get a limited number of words in one line before you have to move to the next line. So, Braille system consists of about 300 abbreviations that you can use in order to write more on a smaller space. I'm beginning to learn these abbreviations now.