Shortform
“yourself” in braille
Written y-r-f — 8 letters cut to 3 letters of abbreviation, then written in 3 cells. That is 5 cells saved every time the word appears.
dots 1-3-4-5-6, then dots 1-2-3-5, then dots 1-2-4
Unicode ⠽⠗⠋ — 8 letters in 3 cells
How to recognise it
y-r-f: the “your” shortform plus the -self f. Your, yourself and yourselves are three separate shortforms that all open with the same two cells, so the pronoun is free and only the ending costs anything. It is the commonest of the five -self words, ahead of himself and myself.
Two steps, not one
Abbreviated in letters first, then written in cells. “yourself” loses 5 letters — o, u, s, e, l — to become yrf. Every letter of the abbreviation is then written as itself, one cell each.
| Stage | What it is | Cells |
|---|---|---|
| Spelled out | yourself | 8 cells |
| Abbreviated | yrf | 3 letters |
| Written | 3 cells |
It carries no endings
No English word begins with “yourself” except the word itself, so there is nothing for an ending rule to decide here. These 3 cells write the bare word and nothing else. “good” is the opposite case — it carries seven different endings.
Learn it with the -self words
This is one of 5 shortforms built to the same shape — the pronoun, then an f — and the set is far quicker learned together than one word at a time: herself (herf), himself (hmf), itself (xf), myself (myf).
What these 3 cells mean elsewhere
Every cell here has other jobs, which is where misreadings come from:
| Cell | Dots | What it is elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| 1-3-4-5-6 | the letter y; the word “you” standing alone | |
| 1-2-3-5 | the letter r; the word “rather” standing alone | |
| 1-2-4 | the letter f; the word “from” standing alone |
Check your own text
The translator writes “yourself” with Grade 2 selected, and the contractions page has all seventy-three.
“yourself” in braille as an image
The word as it is actually written: yrf in 3 cells, not 8 letters.
