Letter 1 of 26
The letter A in braille
A is dot 1.
Dots 1
Unicode ⠁ — U+2801
How to recognise it
A single raised dot in the top-left corner — the simplest cell in the code. If you can feel the difference between one dot and none, you can read a.
A, K and U: one shape
A is the base shape. Add dot 3 and it becomes K; add dots 3 and 6 and it becomes U.
One row lower: the comma
Slide every dot of A down one row — dot 1 becomes dot 2 — and the cell is the comma.
A is also the digit 1
After the number sign, dots 3-4-5-6, A is read as 1 — and one number sign carries a whole run of digits, so 11 is three cells: ⠼⠁⠁. Braille numbers covers where the run ends.
Where A turns up in Grade 2
A is not one of the letters that stands for a whole word on its own, but it does appear inside contractions that combine it with another letter.
| Cell | Letters | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| and | one cell for “and”, whether it is a word of its own or letters inside one | |
| ar | one cell for the letters “ar” | |
| ea | one cell for “ea” in the middle of a word, never at its start or end | |
| was | the word “was”, standing alone |
The contraction reference gives the rules for each.
Writing a capital A
Capital A is two cells: the capital sign, dot 6, then A. A word in capitals takes the sign twice, once for the whole word: “ADD” is ⠠⠠⠁⠙⠙. Capitals covers longer runs.
Easily confused with
A differs by a single dot from B, C, E and K — the letters to drill it against.
Practice words
Words that start with A, one cell per letter in Grade 1. Where Grade 2 writes one shorter, that form follows.
and
Grade 2: ⠯ — 1 cell instead of 3
add
away
In a whole book
In a count over the whole of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the letter a is printed 8,788 times. Grade 2 still writes it as its own cell 4,428 times, 50.4%. The other 4,360 are inside contractions, most often “and” (950), “ar” (679), “said” (460) and “ea” (423).
The cell itself is written 4,695 times in the Grade 2 text: 4,428 as the letter and 267 inside shortforms.
A in braille as an image
