In UEB the 64 braille characters including the space are designated as being either a prefix or a root. There are 8 prefixes: Dots 3456 plus the braille characters formed from the dots in the right column of the cell, that is the characters from Line 7 of the table in section 1.1.2 above. The other 56 braille characters are roots.

The last two braille characters in the table Dots 56 and Dot 6 are special prefixes. A special prefix may be used in combination with another special prefix to form a braille sign. Such braille signs are used only as indicators.

Any other braille sign in UEB is constructed from a root or from a root plus one or more prefixes.

Other forms of English braille write the wordsigns for "a", "and", "for", "of", "the" and "with" unspaced from one another.

Other forms of English braille use the following contractions which are not used in UEB:

o'clock (shortform)

dd (groupsign between letters)

to (wordsign unspaced from following word)

into (wordsign unspaced from following word)

by (wordsign unspaced from following word)

ble (groupsign following other letters)

com (groupsign at beginning of word)

ation (groupsign following other letters)

ally (groupsign following other letters)

Other forms of English braille use the following punctuation signs which are not used in UEB:

opening and closing parentheses (round brackets)

closing square bracket

closing single quotation mark (inverted commas)

ellipsis

dash (short dash)

double dash (long dash)

opening square bracket

Other forms of English braille use the following composition signs (indicators) which are not used in UEB:

non-Latin (non-Roman) letter indicator

accent sign (nonspecific)

print symbol indicator

italic sign (for a word)

double italic sign (for a passage)

Other forms of English braille use the following general symbols which are not used in UEB:

pound sign (pound sterling)

paragraph sign

section sign

dollar sign

asterisk

end of foot

caesura

short or unstressed syllable

long or stressed syllable

Other forms of English braille use special codes to represent mathematics and science, computer notation and other technical or specialised subjects.

Use the alphabetic wordsign when the word it represents is "standing alone".

Refer to: Section 2.6, Terminology and General Rules, for the definition of "standing alone".