“happy birthday” in braille

Grade 1 — letter by letter

Grade 2 — contracted

What Grade 2 changed, word by word

Grade 2 takes this phrase from 13 cells to 11 — 2 cells shorter. One word accounts for it, and here is exactly which rule applied to each.

A contraction is not an abbreviation — the word is still spelled in full, it is just written with fewer cells. A Grade 2 reader sees no difference in meaning, only in length. All the contractions are listed with the position rules that decide when each may be used.

Letter by letter

Before you emboss it

If this is going onto something permanent — jewellery, a card, a tattoo — decide which grade you want first. The two are different lengths and a Grade 2 reader will read the Grade 1 version perfectly well, but not the other way round if the contraction is misapplied.

See the bracelet pattern maker for turning this into a physical layout.

The same thing, in the other codes

Each of these is what someone says in that language at the same moment — not a translation of the English, but the phrase that language's own list already carried. The cells come from each code's own engine.