UEB Tech course Lesson 7 Practice E Question 12

[Michelle Barney]

In the following two examples from the UEB Tech course Lesson 7 Practice E Question 12

In the braille answers they are shown as ;;m9y5x and ;;<m5x>9y, we have gone through the rules and other books we have access to and cannot determine why the grouping indicators are used in one equation and not the other.

 

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[kdejute]

Ah. Interesting.

Thank you for sharing your question!

First, let's make sure to say that this is not an NBA course, and I am not an expert in nor a mentor for the course you mention.

I do have a hypothesis though. It has to do with Guidelines for Technical Material (GTM) §7.7, which says:

If more than one superscript or subscript apply, work from bottom to top, or left to right. If the print indicates by the placing of the subscript that it is being applied after the superscript then the order can be reversed.

So, if we have "m superscript y and then subscript x" in print, the symbols-sequence ;;m9y5x pretty well captures that.

However, if we have "m subscript x and then superscript y" how do we capture the non-simultaneous nature of the x and y? The symbols-sequence ;;m5x9y is what we would use for "m with subscript x and at the same time (or in the same up-and-down print space) superscript y."

This is where, I suspect, the use of the braille grouping indicators comes in. If "m subscript x" is grouped together and then a superscript y is brailled, it captures that something is different from what ;;m5x9y means.

So, ;;<m5x>9y tries to capture that the subscript and superscript are staggered, not sharing the same up-and-down print space.

Sense make? What do you and your colleagues think?

–Kyle

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