Letter 21 of 26
The letter U in braille
U is dots 1, 3 and 6.
Dots 1-3-6
Unicode ⠥ — U+2825
How to recognise it
The third decade begins: u is a plus dots 3 and 6, so the bottom row is full and the top-left is raised. From here on, every cell has dot 6.
A, K and U: one shape
U is A with dots 3 and 6 added; with dot 3 alone, A is K.
Where U turns up in Grade 2
Standing alone, U is the word “us”. Inside a word it is the letter again: “up” is ⠥⠏.
| Cell | Letters | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| ou | one cell for the letters “ou”; standing alone it is the word “out” |
The contraction reference gives the rules for each.
Writing a capital U
Capital U is two cells: the capital sign, dot 6, then U. A word in capitals takes the sign twice, once for the whole word: “UP” is ⠠⠠⠥⠏. Capitals covers longer runs.
Easily confused with
U differs by a single dot from K, V, X and Z — the letters to drill it against.
Practice words
Words that start with U, one cell per letter in Grade 1. Where Grade 2 writes one shorter, that form follows.
up
under
Grade 2: ⠐⠥ — 2 cells instead of 5
until
In a whole book
In a count over the whole of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the letter u is printed 3,465 times. Grade 2 still writes it as its own cell 1,329 times, 38.4%. The other 2,136 are inside contractions, most often “ou” (441), “you” (396), “but” (170) and “out” (117).
The cell itself is written 1,400 times in the Grade 2 text: 1,329 as the letter, 14 as the word “us”, 56 as the second cell of a two-cell contraction and 1 in an accented letter.
U in braille as an image
