Hi Alex. Your points are well said. I did not know that UK Braille
doesn't use the dot 6 for capitalizing words. Thanks for letting me know
this. In regards to the capitalization, I was mainly referring to
people's names and proper nouns. For example, in your email, the display
name shows up as alex wallis instead of Alex Wallis. This is more of
what I was meaning. I'm not trying to imply that it shows lack of
education on the person, but more something like a lack of thinking of
such things if the person uses speech for most of their daily computer
usage. When I type, it's just natural to press the shift key after a
period. And even in fact, when I wrote the example of your name, knowing
I was typing a person's proper name, I pressed the shift key
automatically. It's just what I'm used to because of how I learned about
grammar and proper nouns. Regarding the spelling issues for Braille
users, I completely agree. In fact, I'm making sure to let my 7 year old
know that he can't rely on contracted Braille for everything in terms of
knowing his spelling. It's sad when a child can't spell knowledge or
necessary because they only know the Braille. I think that regardless of
what technology is available to people, basic things like proper
spelling, grammar, and math should be taught so that the reliance on
technology isn't absolute.
Sorry all for getting off topic on this. I'd be happy to discuss more
regarding this off list if someone still wants to.
I don't want this to get heated, and I really should moderate myself.
*smile*.
--
Raul A. Gallegos
Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars;
but have to check when you say the paint is still wet?
Home Page: http://raulgallegos.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/rau47
Facebook: http://facebook.com/rgallegos74
On 5/3/2012 3:02 PM, alex wallis wrote:
Hi Raul,
your message was quite interesting that you sent to the list,
having said that, I must disagree with you about speech and audio
meaning that people don't often capitalize sentences,
or at least, I think maybe its a factor that makes people less likely to
do it, but I think its also down to quality of education.
I am not sure if you know this, but in the UK braille system, there is
no official rule that says you must capitalize sentences and words using
a dot six, or at least there wasn't when I was growing up.
Having said that, I don't know if this is still correct as I believe
when I finished education the powers that be were considering
introducing this from the American braille code.
Having said that, for most of my life up til the age of 12 I had little
contact at all with computers, towards the end of primary school I did
get the chance to use my first computer, a bbc micro and from then on my
use of computers steadily increased to the point where braille is pretty
much unused in my daily life.
I am pretty good at capitalizing sentences, and words, though I must
admit the spell check is very useful for this, and I do sometimes have
to make a conscious effort when correcting messages before sending them
to think about capitalizing certain words and sentences.
But I always go through and check any e mail before sending it.
What I think is a major factor in blind people being bad spellers is a
combination of things, firstly the use of grade 2 Braille, I think that
my learning this really impacted on my ability to spell correctly as I
don't think I thought as much after learning it about how words should
be spelled, and was thinking more about what contraction should be used
where.
The second thing I think that has impacted on the ability of blind
people to spell is the use of spell check, as I don't know about anyone
else, but normally when I use a spell check I don't stop to listen to
the correct spelling always, though I do try to make an effort to do so
when I have the time.
Another area I am quite bad on is the use of punctuation and paragraphs,
I find it quite hard knowing when to place punctuation, so I probably
use far two much of it, and paragraphs I admit I hardly use unless I
really think about it or someone checks something I have written and
reminds me about them.
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