Letter 5 of 26
The letter E in braille
E is dots 1 and 5.
Dots 1-5
Unicode ⠑ — U+2811
How to recognise it
Dots 1 and 5 sit diagonally, top-left to middle-right. e is the most common letter in English: in the book this site measures it is printed 13,569 times, more than any other letter.
E, O and Z: one shape
E is the base shape. Add dot 3 and it becomes O; add dots 3 and 6 and it becomes Z.
One row lower: the “en” sign
Slide every dot of E down one row — dots 1-5 become dots 2-6 — and the cell is the “en” sign.
E is also the digit 5
After the number sign, dots 3-4-5-6, E is read as 5 — and one number sign carries a whole run of digits, so 55 is three cells: ⠼⠑⠑. Braille numbers covers where the run ends.
Where E turns up in Grade 2
Standing alone, E is the word “every”. Inside a word it is the letter again: “eat” is ⠑⠁⠞.
| Cell | Letters | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| the | one cell for “the”, whether it is a word of its own or letters inside one | |
| ed | one cell for the letters “ed” | |
| er | one cell for the letters “er” | |
| en | one cell for the letters “en”; standing alone it is the word “enough” | |
| ea | one cell for “ea” in the middle of a word, never at its start or end | |
| be | one cell for “be” at the start of a word; standing alone it is the word “be” | |
| were | the word “were”, standing alone |
The contraction reference gives the rules for each.
Writing a capital E
Capital E is two cells: the capital sign, dot 6, then E. A word in capitals takes the sign twice, once for the whole word: “EAT” is ⠠⠠⠑⠁⠞. Capitals covers longer runs.
Easily confused with
E differs by a single dot from A, D, H and O — the letters to drill it against.
Practice words
Words that start with E, one cell per letter in Grade 1. Where Grade 2 writes one shorter, that form follows.
eat
end
Grade 2: ⠢⠙ — 2 cells instead of 3
easy
In a whole book
In a count over the whole of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the letter e is printed 13,569 times. Grade 2 still writes it as its own cell 5,543 times, 40.9%. The other 8,026 are inside contractions, most often “the” (2,077), “er” (966), “ed” (919) and “en” (726).
The cell itself is written 5,768 times in the Grade 2 text: 5,543 as the letter, 12 as the word “every”, 12 inside shortforms and 201 as the second cell of a two-cell contraction.
E in braille as an image
