Italian Braille

Italian Braille is the braille alphabet of the Italian language, both in Italy and in Switzerland. It is very close to French Braille, with some differences in punctuation.

Alphabet

Since French Braille does not have a letter for ó, Italian Braille uses ⠬ ò for both ò and ó.

a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h	i
l	m	n	o	p	q	r	s	t
u	v	z	é	à	è	ù	ì	ò, ó

If other letters are needed, such as j, k, w, x, y or accented vowels such as î, French Braille assignments are used. ⠚ j is of course used as the digit 0.

Numbers

Digits are the first ten letters of the alphabet, and are marked by ⠼, as in English Braille.

Although a dot as full stop (period) is ⠲, a dot as a digit separator, as in 3.500 for three thousand five hundred, is ⠄ (⠼⠉⠄⠑⠚⠚).

Punctuation

,	. (stop)	. (num.)	?	!	;	:	'	-	*

⠲ is the full stop / period; ⠄ is the digit separator in numbers.

« ...... »	( ... ) or [ ... ]*	( ...... )	[ ...... ]	{ ...... }

*According to Unesco (2013), Italian Braille uses the old French parentheses ⠶⠀⠶ as square brackets. According to the Unione Italiana Ciechi di Legnano, those are used for parentheses; square brackets are not given. And according to the Unione Italiana dei Ciechi e degli Ipovedenti, square brackets are ⠷⠀⠾; Unesco and the Unione agree on the assignment of ⠢⠀⠔ to the parentheses, as in the chart above, and the Unione has ⠯⠀⠽ for braces. (⠯ ç and ⠽ y are not part of the Italian alphabet.) However, the Unione specifies than the symmetrically paired brackets are mathematical notation, so it may be that the old, generic ⠶⠀⠶ is the convention for either parentheses or square brackets in non-mathematical text.

Formatting

(number)	(capital)	(italic)

References

• Unione Italiana Ciechi di Legnano
• Codice Braille from the Unione Italiana dei Ciechi e degli Ipovedenti
• UNESCO (2013) World Braille Usage, 3rd edition.