Letter 18 of 26
The letter R in braille
R is dots 1, 2, 3 and 5.
Dots 1-2-3-5
Unicode ⠗ — U+2817
How to recognise it
Dots 1, 2, 3 and 5. r is e plus dot 3 plus dot 2, and its full left column with a single middle-right dot is a distinctive shape.
H, R and the “of” sign
R is H with dot 3 added; add dot 6 as well and the cell is the “of” sign, ⠷, rather than a letter.
Adding dots 3 and 6 turns a, b, c, d and e into u, v, x, y and z. For f, g, h, i and j the same step gives the words and, for, of, the and with — so h plus dots 3 and 6 is “of”, not a letter. The contraction reference lists all five.
Where R turns up in Grade 2
Standing alone, R is the word “rather”. Inside a word it is the letter again: “run” is ⠗⠥⠝.
| Cell | Letters | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| for | one cell for “for”, whether it is a word of its own or letters inside one | |
| er | one cell for the letters “er” | |
| ar | one cell for the letters “ar” | |
| were | the word “were”, standing alone |
The contraction reference gives the rules for each.
Writing a capital R
Capital R is two cells: the capital sign, dot 6, then R. A word in capitals takes the sign twice, once for the whole word: “RUN” is ⠠⠠⠗⠥⠝. Capitals covers longer runs.
Easily confused with
R differs by a single dot from H, L, O and Q — the letters to drill it against.
Practice words
Words that start with R, one cell per letter in Grade 1. Where Grade 2 writes one shorter, that form follows.
run
read
Grade 2: ⠗⠂⠙ — 3 cells instead of 4
right
Grade 2: ⠐⠗ — 2 cells instead of 5
In a whole book
In a count over the whole of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the letter r is printed 5,435 times. Grade 2 still writes it as its own cell 2,318 times, 42.6%. The other 3,117 are inside contractions, most often “er” (966), “ar” (679), “for” (189) and “very” (130).
The cell itself is written 2,531 times in the Grade 2 text: 2,318 as the letter, 25 as the word “rather”, 133 inside shortforms and 55 as the second cell of a two-cell contraction.
R in braille as an image
