Directions: prepare for submission the following exercise. Transcribe into braille the following preliminary pages (highly edited, by the way!). Electronic braille generated using a six-key Perkins emulator is the preferred format.
For your submission, assume that your agency does use running heads as a matter of policy.
Submit your braille either via email (if you are using one of the computer-based brailling tools) or via snail-mail (US Postal Service). Electronic braille (Mac/PCBrailler, Duxbury, Edgar, Megadots, Pokadots, MicroBraille, etc.) should be sent via email to rbroadnax@shodor.org.
Since one of the goals of this work is to ensure that you have the correct formatting, you should try to send your file as an email attachment. If you need help learning how to do this, please let me know. It would also be helpful if you could tell me what software you are using to do your work, so that I open your file correctly with the appropriate software the first time and not risk corrupting it by opening it with the wrong software.
You can also use the text box at the bottom of this page to submit your work. Simply cut and paste the braille into the box, then click on the "Submit braille" button. CAUTION: use of this text box MAY NOT preserve your formatting.
DO NOT SEND VIA "FREE MATTER FOR THE BLIND."
A word of CAUTION: the material below has been proofed carefully. If there are mistakes in grammar, use of punctuation, etc., those mistakes were in the text. It's your job to decide what to do about them!
Submissions of hard copy braille is discouraged. No hardcopy braille is accepted. All submissions must be done electronically, using any of the braille preparation software packages (Duxbury, Megadots, Edgar, Pokadot, etc.)
Note: Lines across the full width of the page represent new pages. Shorter lines represent lines that appear in print. When brailling, insert page breaks if your software allows you to so. If not, please provide some indication via email or in the document itself where you would use a new page.
Part One: Title Page
Prepare an appropriate title page for a book, given the following information. Use your own personal information as appropriate!
Title: Science and Technical Writing: A Manual of Style
Author: Philip Rubens, General Editor
Publishers/Copyright owners: A Henry Holt Reference Book, Henry Hold and Company, New York
Copyright date: 1992 by Philip Rubens
IBSN: 0-8050-1831-X
Print version has 550 pages total, assume you are brailling volume one. There are 13 pages of print Table of Contents, one page entitled "Exhibits", three pages of Preface. There is a 40/25 braille-to-print embossing ratio. Use the volume calculator to determine number of volumes and other specifics.
Part Two: Content page
Contents
List of Exhibits
xix
Preface
xxi
1 Audience Analysis and Document Planning
1
Analyzing the Audience
2
Conducting the Audience Analysis
2
Identifying Audience Characteristics
2
Identifying Audience Objectives and Needs
3
Addressing Diverse Audiences
6
Determining the Appropriate Medium
6
Brochures
6
Booklets
7
Newsletters
7
Articles
8
Technical Documents
9
2 Solving Paragraph and Sentence Problems
21
Grammar and Scientific and Technical Communication
23
Paragraphs: Creating Functional Units
23
The Nontechnical Paragraph
23
Part Three: Exhibits page
Exhibits
EXHIBIT
TITLE
1-1
Communication Media Characteristics
7
5-1
Typical Abbreviation Disagreements
109
5-2
Sample Initialisms
115
5-3
Indirect Articles and Acronyms
116
5-4
Typographic Treatment of Symbols
117
6-1
Common European Languages Using the Roman Alphabet
127
6-2
Common West European Family Name Prefixes
128
6-3
Comparison of Galactic Cataloging Systems
166
Part Four: Preface
Preface
This text will help writers plan consistent and useful scientific and technical documents. It includes advice on all aspects of information design, from audience analysis to indexing to document design. Every aspect of a document, regardless of its length, requires advance planning. Thus, the first 11 chapters describe how to create useful text; the next two chapters describe how to create illustrations and data displays; and the final chapter describes how to create useful documents designs.
Three chapters --Chapter 5, "Abbreviations", Chapter 6, "Specialized Terminology", Chapter 7, "Numbers and Symbols"--contain closely related information useful in preparing technical and scientific documents. Here readers can discover how to use typographic conventions for mathematics and science.
Part Five: Sample page
Below is a sample page (print page 92) from Science and Technical Writing: A Manual of Style. Prepare this page in braille. Not including the line immediately below this paragraph, the print version includes three print lines. Format of the page below reflects the format of the print page. This page begins on braille page 48 of Volume 2.
SPELLING
American Versus British Spelling
Easy Mispellings
Foreign Words
SPECIALIZED SPELLING
Everyone who writes should own a suitable dictionary. The latest version of a college dictionary, preferably an unabridged version, is probably the most easily referred to source. For professions that use specialized words, a technical dictionary should also be available, perhaps one directed to a specific techical or scientific discipline.
DICTIONARY PREFERENCE
If a dictionary provides more than one spelling, the first spelling is preferable. American rather than British spelling should be used for material published in the United States. Periodically updated dictionaries can be especially useful in tracking words that have entered the language recently.
Electronic Dictionaries
Many computerized word processors have spelling checkers, but be cautious of them. Although an automated spelling checker may question words it does not recognize, it will not question a word that is incorrect in context. For example, casual is a perfectly good word, but if you intended to write causual, the spelling check will not catch this error.
PLURALS
Endings and Plurals
Form plurals by adding s or es to the singular. Use es for words ending in j, x, z, sh: appendixes, arcs, masks, rushes.
Some words that end in f, ff, or fe may change the plural to a ve form; some even have two forms: halves, leaves, lives, staffs (staves) (different meaning, however), wolves.
