The alphabet in BSL is mainly signed with two hands. Signing letters in BSL is known as fingerspelling. Fingerspelling is used (formally) for proper nouns such as a person’s name, a place or a brand. It’s common to also use fingerspelling to spell words that people don’t know the sign for, or a word that doesn’t have an established sign yet.
Your dominant hand should perform the main action in two-handed signs. Visualise your dominant hand being a pen and your non-dominant hand the paper.
Position your hands just in front of your chest and make sure the signs are visible to someone watching you.
How to sign the alphabet in BSL
In the images below, Dan demonstrates how to sign the alphabet in BSL. You’ll notice the main actions (e.g. pointing) are done with his right hand as Dan is right-handed. If you’re left-handed, simply switch hands.
Video demonstration
Here’s a video demonstration of the BSL fingerspelling alphabet.
Images from a signer point of view
We have created a poster to show the BSL fingerspelling alphabet from a signer point of view.
In the downloads section at the bottom of this page, you can download this poster for free in either PDF or PNG formats.
Good to know
When spelling out words, you should mouth the entire word, so the lip pattern of the word is accurate, not individual letters. Fluent signers tend to focus on the mouth when watching BSL with the hand movements in their peripheral vision.
You will usually have some context, therefore when understanding fingerspelling it can be useful to focus on the start and end of words because your brain can fill in the blanks.
In English, letters may be uppercase or lowercase however in BSL’s manual alphabet letters do not change as there is no official written form of the language.
Exercises
Exercise 1: Increase your fingerspelling speed
Fingerspelling the names of towns and cities will help to improve your speed. Try to sign cities to a partner or in the mirror.
1. BELFAST
2. BRIGHTON
3. GLASGOW
4. GLOUCESTER
5. LEICESTER
6. LIVERPOOL
7. NORWICH
8. PLYMOUTH
9. SOUTHAMPTON
10. WREXHAM
Exercise 2: Can you understand these three words?
Key points to remember
1. Don’t switch hands when fingerspelling.
2. Mouth the word as you spell it.
3. Fingerspelling is useful for names and signs you either don’t know or do not have an establish sign yet.
Useful downloads and links
Weekly BSL Fingerspelling Quiz Playlist on YouTube – Every Friday we publish a new fingerspelling quiz across our social media pages focusing on a different topic. This link has all the quizzes in one YouTube playlist.
British Sign Language Fingerspelling Font – We’ve created a free BSL fingerspelling font for you to download and use in your own creative projects.