uses 18 handshapes for ordinary signs, plus a few marginal handshapes taken from the American Manual Alphabet for fingerspelling.

Not all handshapes occur with every orientation, movement, or location: there are restrictions. For example, the 5 and F handshapes (the approximate shapes of the hand in fingerspelling 5 and F) only make contact with another part of the body through the tip of the thumb, whereas the K and 8 (a.k.a. Y) handshapes only make contact through the tip of the middle