Hi Alex!

You don’t indicate if you are categorizing your document as Category 1 or Category 2 in BANA’s taxonomy. Since both of those assume you will be transcribing uncontracted anyway, it is normally the case that we would not use a UEB grade 1/uncontracted braille indicator.

That said, if you are using the traditional numbering system (same as UEB numbers), there is no choice but to use the UEB grade 1/uncontracted braille indicator in the situation you describe, so that the “h” is not read as numeral 8.

I will recommend a transcriber’s note to prepare the reader for this. Put your note in the front matter T-notes and immediately before the first use of a UEB grade 1/uncontracted braille indicator.

In particular:

#h;h#jj

#af;h#cj

While I don’t have a specific reference to verify the following, I understand this use of a UEB indicator as analogous to the use of UEB punctuation in BANA’s Category 1 and Category 2 non-English braille.

<hr />

To smuggle some additional information here — beyond the specifics of your question, it is also the case that in French, the Antoine numbering system is used for mathematics, pharmaceuticals, and academic publications. If you were transcribing maths, pharma, or academic content, the Antoine numbers would look like this:

,\h##

,*$h%#

Antoine numbering isn’t as cryptic as it might first appear. The familiar traditional numbers are mostly there, with the addition of a dot-6. The numeric sequence is prefaced with a dot-6 to get things started. The only case where this is not the case, is with the digit “0” which is dots 3456. The sequence ends with the next space.

Let us know if this helps!