About Fingerspelling

Making your fingerspelling clear to understand

Signers often use lip-patterns to help the viewer take in information.

If you are spelling out your name, don’t mouth each individual letter – mouth the whole word just as you would say it.

It’s OK to mouth each letter of an abbreviation if you are fingerspelling – for example I then T for ‘information technology’.

Try to find somewhere which is well-lit when you are fingerspelling.

Watch the BSL video clips on this site to see examples of fluent fingerspelling produced by our own Deaf experts.