Letter 3 of 26
The letter C in braille
C is dots 1 and 4.
Dots 1-4
Unicode ⠉ — U+2809
How to recognise it
Dots 1 and 4 make a horizontal pair across the top. c and b are the same two dots rotated; the direction of the pair is the whole distinction.
C, M and X: one shape
C is the base shape. Add dot 3 and it becomes M; add dots 3 and 6 and it becomes X.
One row lower: the colon
Slide every dot of C down one row — dots 1-4 become dots 2-5 — and the cell is the colon.
C is also the digit 3
After the number sign, dots 3-4-5-6, C is read as 3 — and one number sign carries a whole run of digits, so 33 is three cells: ⠼⠉⠉. Braille numbers covers where the run ends.
Where C turns up in Grade 2
Standing alone, C is the word “can”. Inside a word it is the letter again: “cat” is ⠉⠁⠞.
| Cell | Letters | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| ch | one cell for the letters “ch”; standing alone it is the word “child” | |
| cc | one cell for “cc” in the middle of a word, never at its start or end | |
| con | one cell for “con” at the start of a word |
The contraction reference gives the rules for each.
Writing a capital C
Capital C is two cells: the capital sign, dot 6, then C. A word in capitals takes the sign twice, once for the whole word: “CAT” is ⠠⠠⠉⠁⠞. Capitals covers longer runs.
Easily confused with
C differs by a single dot from A, D, F and M — the letters to drill it against.
Practice words
Words that start with C, one cell per letter in Grade 1.
cat
come
cold
In a whole book
In a count over the whole of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the letter c is printed 2,396 times. Grade 2 still writes it as its own cell 1,602 times, 66.9%. The other 794 are inside contractions, most often “ch” (284), “could” (83), “con” (64) and “can” (59).
The cell itself is written 1,769 times in the Grade 2 text: 1,602 as the letter, 59 as the word “can”, 107 inside shortforms and 1 as the second cell of a two-cell contraction.
C in braille as an image
