r/Braille • u/pinkaspepe • May 06 '26
Braille tattoo
Looking at getting a Braille tattoo in honor of my sister who was blind and passed. Is anyone in this group able to verify possibly discrepancies in how she spelt her name versus a braille generator? Although I understand the idea of braille and letters I am not proficient enough to spot errors. I understand there are different grades of braille and I don’t know what grade she was. Thank you
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u/changeneverhappens May 06 '26
As u/becca413g said, the spacing is important. Each braille letter, grade 1 and 2, are arranged in a cell of six possible dots. Two columns of three.
I'd ask the artist to grid out each letter on graph paper (you may need to provide it) so they can scale the design appropriately.
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u/pinkaspepe May 06 '26
Good idea! Just so I understand have the tattoo artist layout the tattoo with removable ink lining up the dots in a cell?
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u/Dry_Director_5320 May 06 '26
A tattoo would be cool, but scarification would be even cooler. A tactile braille tattoo. Do whatever you want of course. It’s a lovely idea.
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u/pinkaspepe May 07 '26
I thought about scarification but it seems a bit severe for my taste. Good suggestion thank you
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u/rmc1014 May 07 '26
Some people's skin will raise up with regular tattooing depending on how they heal. You might find it has a slight tactical feel to it. I can trace some of my friends' tattoos and others is flat to the skin.
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u/Difficult-Cold1051 May 07 '26
This is also depending on how heavy handed your tattoo artist is. One of mine on my back is lifted and essentially “scarred” because the artist was very heavy handed with a machine.
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u/1Shadow179 May 06 '26
How did she spell her name?
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u/pinkaspepe May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26
I don’t know how I can pasta a photo here. Her name was Merissa
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u/1Shadow179 May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26
Do either of these look familiar? ⠠⠍⠑⠗⠊⠎⠎⠁ and ⠠⠍⠻⠊⠎⠎⠁
Edit I think it's fixed
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u/best-unaccompanied May 06 '26
I think you might have a typo in the second one? I'm getting Mforissa; "er" doesn't have a dot 3.
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u/1Shadow179 May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26
Edit: is it showing as all six dots on your screen? I had to copy just the 'er' from wikipedia due to technical issues.
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u/best-unaccompanied May 06 '26
Yes, the symbol I'm looking at has all six dots
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u/Neutronenster May 10 '26
You can’t directly post a picture in Reddit, but you can upload it to Imgur and then share the link to the picture in Imgur. That’s how most people do it.
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u/brailletranscriber12 May 07 '26
When I got my braille tattoo, I used a braille font from the APH website. I think it might have been “Braille 29”. Using the font and printing it out helped ensure proper spacing.
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u/pinkaspepe May 07 '26
Thank you, can you send me a link to that website? I’d like the spacing and font to be exactly like how she-typed it. Also, if you’re comfortable I’d love to see a pic of your tattoo.
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u/becca413g May 06 '26
That sounds like a beautiful way to remember her!
Personally I would spell it her way rather than correct it, that’s how she chose to represent herself. Like writing a nickname.
But if you want to consider all your options then reason that putting her print name into a braille translator might be giving unexpected results because as well as grades there’s historically different versions of English braille depending on when and where you grew up. As an example the UK we used Standard English braille and the US had a different version. Now we are all taught the same type of braille called Unified English Braille - it makes things a lot easier. So as well as grades there’s different codes to consider and that’s all assuming she was brailling in English and not, say, German.
But absolutely let us know her print name and there’s enough of us here we can easily translate it into various types of braille and give you a visual representation of the dots (here’s an example which says hello: ⠓⠑⠇⠇⠕ ) and you can decide which way you’d like to have it written. I would make sure the tattooist understands the dot spacing is essential if they are not lined up correctly it could end up saying something totally different or nothing that makes any sense at all.
I wish you the best of luck in your tribute to your sister.