This is an image of the braille alphabet in simulated braille as written in grade 2


Assignment 17: Pagination, Headings, Attributions, Marginal Notes,
Reference to Sources, More On Translation Software

As you have learned throughout this course, this course covers a lot of items, in a short period of time. The short period of time is the inclusion of 19 different assignments and so much in one.

Pagination

This section is straight forward. The only thing that I do not like in regards to this assignment is talking about page numbers that are hyphenated. Until I read the lesson material, and the accompanying Braille Formats 2016 (BANA) I've never seen this before!

To accomplish this using the Percent codes, Braille2000 created an edition to the percent codes called %pn=x|x where the vertical bar is used to break up the percent codes. This allows the transcriber to use the next page command as they would and it would properly account all of the page numbers. Assignments 17 and 18 have this concept. 18 will be covered after its completion but you should know that this notion is carried over to that lesson.

Headings

Headings are straight forward, one centered heading and two different headings for sub-headings. In print, at least in HTML and other web languages, there are 6 headings, and we're only accounting for three levels in braille. For some strange reason, Running Heads are discussed in this section. Why? The running head has been used the entire time, and in assignment 18, the whole notion of what you've learned so far is out the window. It doesn't make sense to cover running heads here, you should've talked about it in lesson 2 as a discussion point since you want us to use them throughout the entire course.

Attribution

Attributions were quite interesting, and seems very confusing to me. With so many rules and the examples not really clear, its hard to follow. They only put a portion of the material instead of an entire section so we can see what it looks like in context.

Marginal Notes and Reference Material

This seemed confusing to me. Reference Markers were always mentioned by an asteresk (*) and I've heard of dagger characters and double daggers, but never seen those until this assignment. Braille2000 had to be updated to fully understand these new symbols, and the dot combinations seem to be confusing for the dagger and double dagger to me.

Notes

There is a new term called a Note Separation Line which I've never seen until this assignment. I know in magazines like Braille Book Review they used a signal point like a line of dashes between sections which were centered and only about a half dozen, but never did I see this before. It really made it interesting, as in an RTF file, you need to enter this in simulated Braille.

What confused me, was whether I needed a line at both notes like in one of the items in this assignment, or whether it was one line, then the text. In the example, they only use one note, and its a starred note which made sense. It also says to braille additional paragraphs in 5-3 format, and in one of the problems, I did that because I was confused on what it was conveying with the multiple markers and the like. Lynnette was instrumental in mentoring me to understand how this was to be done, as there was only one sample and the assignment had multiple(s) so I got confused even after rereading the section I'm talking about within these paragraphs.

Translation Software

Braille 2000 allows you to be able to type the Running Head once, and never bother with it again. It also allows you to use multiple running heads (assignment 18) as well. The percent code for this is %runhead and we've demonstrated this throughout the course starting with assignment 13. Headings are also covered again in this section, as well as page change indicators which are discussed in great length earlier in the lesson.

The Exercise

The exercise has you use the Lesson number and this is the last assignment that does this. All of my copies of the braille show me that the assignment should be 8 pages in length when finally completed. Some of the braille copies have blank lines after the page change indicator because a blank line is requested by the instructions within this very complex exercise. You're using various formats, attributions, headings, and the like. If the section ends near the bottom of the page, take the blank line after the running head. This is a possibility, so watch for it.

The Report

With all the drawbacks of my misunderstanding and multiple braille outs, I passed this assignment the first time. How, I have no idea! I got the report back on January 23, 2020 and I'm bglad I only needed to do this once. There were three issues.

If these are the only blemishes, than I'm happy. I am happy for that, 4 copies and tons of time including the Christmas Break proved to be valuable.

Audio

In the audio, I'll step you through some of the file in RTF so you can see how this was prepared and I'll take you through the same set using Braille2000. The talking edition plays a big importance here, as verifying what you think it should be, is important. In the first braille out, I was under the assumption that the multi notes in one of the numbers were part of the same one, yet I was told differently. I'll talk about the various percent codes to generate the braille. Thanks to Lynette and Bob for the assistance in this, I worked hard!

That completes the write up on assignment 16.