The letter M in braille

How to recognise it

Dots 1, 3 and 4. m is c plus dot 3, and it is easy to confuse with u until you notice m has its extra dot on the top row, not the bottom.

C, M and X: one shape

M is C with dot 3 added; add dot 6 as well and it becomes X.

Where M turns up in Grade 2

Standing alone, M is the word “more”. Inside a word it is the letter again: “man” is ⠍⠁⠝.

Writing a capital M

Capital M is two cells: the capital sign, dot 6, then M. A word in capitals takes the sign twice, once for the whole word: “MAN” is ⠠⠠⠍⠁⠝. Capitals covers longer runs.

Easily confused with

M differs by a single dot from C, K, N, P and X — the letters to drill it against.

Practice words

Words that start with M, one cell per letter in Grade 1. Where Grade 2 writes one shorter, that form follows.

In a whole book

In a count over the whole of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the letter m is printed 2,104 times. Grade 2 still writes it as its own cell 1,612 times, 76.6%. The other 492 are inside contractions, most often “some” (87), “time” (82), “much” (54) and “more” (48).

The cell itself is written 1,842 times in the Grade 2 text: 1,612 as the letter, 48 as the word “more”, 170 inside shortforms and 12 as the second cell of a two-cell contraction.