Some aspects of German contracted Braille

In the older system, it was very important to label contractions, which was done mainly by a hyphen . If thi s contraction was part of a larger word, this hyphen had to be put before and behind the contraction . In the new system both hyphens are omitted . Contractions composed of two signs can be applied without any precautions . We have contraction s consisting of two as well as of one character and the contractions consisting of one character now have to be preceded b y dot 2 if they are part of a larger word . Of course if they occur as a single word, for instance the word "end", only a "u " is written between two blank cells . This is a very great simplification and it is now possible because of this and othe r simplifications also to learn the new system within three weeks, which is a fraction of the time necessary before the change s were made . Reading is nearly the same as it was, but writing is easier than it was before . What the computer is producin g is especially well-readable and it is so good that we intend to produce not only magazines but also books in this way . I wish to mention one thing about the contractions . I have mentioned before in the discussions that we have about 400 contractions in the lists ; 300 are taken from the old system and about 100 new contractions have been added . Fortunately, shortly before the first system was developed, a large count had been taken by Keding . He counted 2 million Germa n words from miscellaneous texts, counted the frequency of a great many of them, and listed those which occurred a t least 10 times . The first list of contractions was based on this count with the effect that the most frequently used word s have been contracted, which was very effective . Unfortunately, there is no new count, and when searching for ne w contractions the old lists (now nearly 100 years old) had to be used . The language, however, has changed only in some certain aspects and most of the frequency counts found 100 years ago are still fairly reliable . Selecting new contractions , we looked for the frequencies of them in the lists and for the abbreviation effect .