[NFB-Braille-Discussion] Slate and Stylus

Mike Jolls mrspock56 at hotmail.com
Wed Jun 9 22:00:45 UTC 2021


I’d like to weigh in here on “writing backwards”.  I’m a partially sighted person who found Braille in my early 50’s.  I’m 65 and I still use it.  I go back and forth with print and Braille.  It’s great having both skills and I can use Braille when I know print just isn’t going to work.  I wish I had known Braille LOT EARLIER … but it just didn’t happen.  Personally, I think every partially sighted student should learn Braille.  Then they can use whichever method will work for them in a given situation.  Of course that’s not what this topic is about and I won’t go further.  That’s another topic if we want to pursue it.

Now, onto “writing backwards” on the slate and stylus.

When I learned Braille and learned to write with a slate and stylus, I ALWAYS thought that writing was OPPOSITE or BACKWARDS to how you read it.  You write it right to left rather than when you’re reading it.  You had to use the “opposite dot pattern” when writing a character in the cell.  That’s backwards in my thinking.  A “B” for example is written in dots 4,5 on the right side of the cell rather than 1,2 on the left side of the cell (that assumes you are still thinking about the cell dots in the configuration used for reading).  And I always did this.  My teacher NEVER told me to think of dots 1 and 2 on the right side of the cell when writing.  I knew a B was dots 1,2.  I knew dots 1,2 were on the left (for reading).  Since I had to write them on the right hand side of the cell, I thought it was BACKWARDS.  You had to use 4-5 to write a B which should up as dots 1-2 when you read it.  I remember my teacher liked to say “mirror image”.  Had she told me that I should consider 1,2 on the right hand side of the cell for writing and 4-5-6 was on the left, maybe I wouldn’t have thought it was backwards.  I would have thought .. OK … 1-2-3 are on the left for reading, but they’re on the right side for writing.  Since she didn’t make that distinction, I saw that the dots had to be in the opposite position to that for reading so that when you flipped the page over, they’d be correct for reading.  So I just thought .. punch the opposite dots in the cell when writing a character.  My realization may have reinforced the idea of opposite.  That’s just how I perceived the process.  I remember once I mentioned to her that I was writing the characters BACKWARDS.  I was immediately told I was wrong and “we don’t use the word backwards, it’s too confusing”.  Personally I didn’t see it as confusing.  I just saw that this was what you had to do.  And I do remember that I made my fair share of errors when writing.  Perhaps that would have been less had I just considered things differently for writing.

Anyway that’s how I learned.  It just seemed natural to think about writing “the opposite pattern” to get it come out right for reading.

Please feel free to comment.

Mike Jolls





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From: Susan Jolly via NFB-Braille-Discussion<mailto:nfb-braille-discussion at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 9, 2021 4:08 PM
To: 'NFB Braille Discussion List'<mailto:nfb-braille-discussion at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Susan Jolly<mailto:easjolly at ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: [NFB-Braille-Discussion] Slate and Stylus

I wonder if opposite would be a better word? You read from left-to-right and
write from right-to-left.  They are both the opposite of the other one.

My father, who was born over a hundred years ago, could write print
backwards almost as easily as forwards.  I got the impression that was
something a lot of sighted people used to do. It kept other people from
looking over their shoulder and reading what they were writing with a quick
glance.  This could be helpful if they were writing something private like a
note to pass to a friend in school.  Of course the main point of this story
is that all it requires is motivation and practice.

HTH, Susan J


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