[rsherwood12]

Thank you for the clear response from Bonnie Read.

I guess I just don't understand how reading individual transcriber's notes in the preliminary pages will help early readers understand individual transcriber's notes since they are presented without context. The student will encounter the notes when they find them in the volume and ask the teacher for help at that point if needed. Also, as they get older they won't encounter individual transcriber's notes listed on the global TN page. Listing them in the prelims without any context seems like it just gives younger readers more preliminary pages to read through.

I do see how listing them for the teacher in the inkprint Teacher's Reference Material pages in grades K-3 is helpful and that listing the print page number will help the teacher find which note the student is referring to as they encounter it in the body.

Just my two cents, though I understand that the Guidelines have been published, so I will refer transcribers I work with to that document and this explanation by Bonnie.

Thanks much,
Rebecca

[rsherwood12]

Hi Cindi,

Following up on this issue:

Section 2.2 of the Guidelines for Early Educational Materials states: "The Transcriber's Notes page: (2.2.3) Lists all the transcriber's notes ... that appear in the volume at the kindergarten and first grade levels."

• 1. Does this mean that the individual notes should only be included in the braille TN page in grades K-1? (not grades 2-3?)

Section 4.3 on the inkprint Teacher's Reference Materials states: "The Teacher's Reference Material should include the following: (4.3.2.c) a print copy of the TN page(s), including a listing of each transcriber's note from within the braille volume."

• 2. Does this mean that all grade levels K-3 should have the individual transcriber's notes listed in the inkprint, or only grades K-1 since it seems that only K-1 will have the individual notes listed in braille?

Sorry if this is beating a dead horse. I'm just receiving files from different transcribers to emboss and print out that are formatted all different ways, and I would like to have a standard recommendation to make.

Thanks,
Rebecca

[rsherwood12]

Hi Cindi,

In this text, the line is divided into feet using the single slash /. Principle pauses are marked with // which can occur within or between feet, but they are secondary to the foot marks. So, technically, I should only divide at a // if it comes at the end of a foot.

I'm attaching an updated example which divides two feet in order to prevent dividing words. Does this look like a good compromise to you? I agree that since the student is learning Latin, dividing words is not a great idea. I just hope that since the topic here is scansion that they will still be able to easily find the foot and pause marks.

Thanks for your help!

Rebecca

 

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[rsherwood12]

Thanks much! I'm glad for the confirmation that I was not missing any kind of update or alternative reading to the rules re: standing alone.

Best,
Rebecca

[rsherwood12]

Thanks, Dan!

[rsherwood12]

Thanks, Cindi. I agree that's the way it's worded. I'm just wondering why it would be helpful to have all of the transcriber's notes in the braille both on the TN page and in the body. Especially for early readers, it seems like it would be a lot of extra material to read through at the beginning and extra pages to carry around. Listing all the TNs in the inkprint Teacher's Reference Materials makes sense to me because it's for the teacher and listed all in one place in print, but I would think only global notes need to be on the TN page in braille.

I look forward to hearing what other feedback you find. 🙂

Best,
Rebecca

[rsherwood12]

I just realized this should probably be under the Braille Formats forum instead and have posted my questions over there.

Thanks!

Rebecca

[rsherwood12]

Hello and thank you for your question!

I would definitely place the opening capitals passage indicator after the opening question mark for the following reason: Although not explicitly stated in the UEB section on capitalized passages, UEB 8.3.3 states "Only a modifier or a ligature indicator can be positioned between a letter and its capitals prefix." By extension, I believe the capitals passage indicator must occur after the opening question mark and before the first capitalized letter:  ⠢⠠⠠⠠⠙⠬⠝⠙⠑⠀

I don't think there is a hard and fast rule about the terminator. UEB 8.6.2 says that "the capitals terminator may precede or follow punctuation and other terminators but it is best that indicators and paired characters ... be nested". The example in UEB 8.5.5 shows the capitals terminator in the last paragraph following the closing punctuation even though the capitals passage indicator occurs after the opening quotation mark. (This  placement may just be because it's a series of capitalized paragraphs so true nesting isn't possible, but the code doesn't explicitly state that). As a counter example, UEB 8.6.2 shows the capitals indicators nested within the opening and closing quotation marks in the first sample sentence.

While Duxbury's treatment is technically correct, my preference would be to close the capitals before the closing question mark as follows:

⠢⠠⠠⠠⠙⠬⠝⠙⠑⠀⠉⠕⠍⠑⠍⠕⠎⠀⠓⠕⠽⠠⠄⠢

Please let me know if you have any additional questions!

Best,
Rebecca

 

 

[rsherwood12]

Thank you for your feedback!

[rsherwood12]

Thank you, Kyle! A few follow-up questions accompanied by an attachment with examples:

1. If I use Nemeth when the functions and commands are interspersed with mathematical expressions, can you confirm that the words would be transcribed without contractions, and italics would be omitted because the italics are used throughout, similarly to the way italics for variable letters are omitted whether they are unmodified in UEB or within Nemeth code?

2. When commands appear embedded in explanatory text, and they are not in contact with mathematical expressions, can I stay in UEB and use contractions and UEB typeform indicators (for instance, "To define matrices and perform Gaussian elimination using Maple, first access the LinearAlgebra library using the command")?

3. When the function names are all capitals (set NROW(i) = i.), would I just use the double capitalization indicator rather than capitalizing each letter? It does not seem like the individual letters have mathematical significance.

4. For alignment of the pseudo-programs listed in steps, would a nested list using as many levels of indention as there are in print, following the line breaks used print, be acceptable since it's not exactly itemized mathematical material? In the attached, there are three vertically aligned equations under Step 5. Would you ignore the vertical alignment and just put the second and third lines in cell 5 (because it is a third level indent, with Step 5 being a second level and Step 2 being the first level)?

5. There is a symbol := that is sometimes spaced and sometimes unspaced (examples of each in the attached). There doesn't appear to be a Nemeth code symbol for this. Would you use the literary colon followed by the spaced equals sign? or put the colon directly next to the equals sign?

⠸⠩⠀⠠⠙⠊⠛⠊⠞⠎⠸⠒⠀⠨⠅⠀⠼⠒

or

⠠⠮⠀⠁⠥⠛⠰⠞⠫⠀⠍⠁⠞⠗⠊⠭⠀⠸⠩⠀⠠⠁⠠⠁⠀⠸⠱⠀⠊⠎⠀⠙⠑⠋⠔⠫⠀⠃⠽
⠀⠀⠸⠩⠀⠠⠁⠠⠁
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠒⠨⠅⠀⠠⠍⠁⠞⠗⠊⠭
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠷⠈⠷⠈⠷⠆⠨⠂⠂⠠⠀⠤⠲⠨⠆⠂⠠⠀⠴⠨⠔⠆⠂⠠⠀⠆⠨⠴⠂⠈⠾⠠
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠷⠲⠨⠴⠂⠠⠀⠂⠴⠨⠆⠠⠀⠤⠂⠨⠂⠆⠠⠀⠤⠒⠨⠴⠔⠈⠾⠠
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠷⠂⠨⠴⠔⠠⠀⠴⠨⠔⠦⠶⠠⠀⠴⠨⠦⠒⠆⠠⠀⠲⠨⠆⠂⠈⠾⠈⠾⠾⠀⠸⠱

Thanks much for your patience looking over this challenging textbook!

Best,
Rebecca

• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by rsherwood12.

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[rsherwood12]

Foreign language textbooks certainly like to employ all kinds of typeforms to direct the attention of the reader, and as you've noticed, this can introduce a lot of clutter into the foreign language material.

In my response, I will refer to the material you're inquiring about as a conjugation chart or verb chart (depending on what the textbook calls them), rather than a word list. The Vocabulario box on the right of the page is an example of what Braille Formats considers a foreign language word list, and the formatting of a word lists is covered by BF2016 section 17.7.

Braille Formats 5.1.2 states that font attributes that add meaning to the text must be retained. In this case, does the highlighting provide necessary information in all places it is used? In my opinion, in the explanatory text, the highlighting does have meaning or the teacher may refer to the different colors of highlighting. However, in the verb chart, it is self-evident which words are spelled with "ue" and which with "u". Adding highlighting to the letters "ue" and "u" does not add useful information and may interfere with the reader's ability to read the word in its normal form. When changes are made to the print format, it is never wrong to add an explanatory transcriber's note. For instance, "In the following verb chart, green highlighting on the letter "u" and orange highlighting on the letters "ue" have been omitted."

The bold within the words in the verb chart does hold information which is not explained in the surrounding text (it separates the stem from the ending of each form of the verb), so I would recommending retaining the bold.

If you felt the highlighting within the verb chart did help the reader by establishing the pattern of spelling changes, you could follow BF5.8 (and example 5-16). This gives the transcriber the option of showing the material twice: once without indicators and then again with indicators using a transcriber's note to alert the reader of the format. I think the way you have brailled the chart in your sample might be one solution (provided you place the words with the typeform indicators in the runover position for the column). A possible TN would be: "In the following verb chart, the words are shown first without emphasis and then repeated with all indicators used." Theoretically, you could show the entire chart twice, once without the indicators and once with them in order to avoid having runovers within the chart.

For the phrase jugar a + sport, I would suggest placing this in cell 3-5 as displayed text separated from the surrounding text by blank lines. This format would allow you to omit the boldface because the shift in language is indicated by the change in margins and blank lines. The green highlighting on "a" as well as the green font and italics on the word "sport" are significant and would be retained:

⠠⠱⠢⠀⠽⠀⠥⠎⠑⠀⠘⠂⠚⠥⠛⠁⠗⠀⠾⠀⠮⠀⠐⠝⠀⠷⠀⠁⠀⠎⠏⠕⠗⠞⠂
⠥⠎⠑

⠀⠀⠚⠥⠛⠁⠗⠀⠈⠼⠂⠁⠀⠐⠖⠀⠐⠼⠂⠨⠂⠎⠏⠕⠗⠞

⠠⠊⠛⠝⠁⠉⠊⠕⠀⠁⠎⠅⠎⠀⠠⠗⠕⠃⠻⠞⠕⠒

For the section with sentence/translation pairs at the bottom of the sample, "Ignacio asks Roberto:" and "Coach Castillo asks:" are part of the paragraph above and should be placed in 1-1. The Spanish and English sentences would be treated as displayed material because they are set off from the surrounding text by blank lines and by a change of print margin. I would place them in 3-7, 5-7 as you have them, just with the addition of blank lines above and below.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

[rsherwood12]

Correct. Because it is added by the transcriber, The End would also be written in contracted English enclosed in transcriber's note indicators.

[rsherwood12]

Thank you so much for the interesting question and the print and braille samples. I am running it by my committee now and will respond as soon as possible.

[rsherwood12]

Hello,

Thank you for attaching the print sample. I would recommend following print and retaining the superscript position. See Samples 13-8 and 16-6 in BF2016 which demonstrate that the superscript position of the reference mark is indicated in both the text and preceding the note because print shows it as superscript in both places.

Are you familiar with the formatting for gloss notes such as these which introduce new foreign language vocabulary  (BF2016 section 16.6 Gloss Notes in Foreign Language Texts)? In foreign language materials, such notes are placed on the braille line following the words they explain, starting in cell 7 with runovers in cell 5. The foreign language article in the Spring 2018 Bulletin covers gloss notes in more detail.

Please let me know if you would like clarification on gloss notes or have any other questions.

Best,
Rebecca

[rsherwood12]

Hello and thank you for your question.

Text inserted by the transcriber is written in contracted English. The transcriber's note indicators alert the reader to the shift in language so there is no confusion with contractions and foreign alphabet signs. The word "Picture" or even a longer transcriber's note explaining a format to the student will be in contracted English.

One reason for using contracted English in TNs is that the transcriber may not necessarily be fluent in the language, so mistakes that inhibit the students' learning could be introduced.

Another reason is that because the transcriber is in an English-speaking country, it is likely that the primary language of the reader is English and that they are learning Spanish. Even though they are at an advanced level, they may not understand all the vocabulary used in a foreign language transcriber's note and be at a disadvantage in using the book.

Best,
Rebecca

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