The letter W in braille

How to recognise it

Dots 2, 4, 5 and 6 — the exception in the whole alphabet. Louis Braille designed the code for French, which had no w, so w was added afterwards and does not follow the decade pattern at all.

Why W sits outside the pattern

w breaks the pattern. Louis Braille built the code for French, which had no letter w, so w was added later and does not follow decade 3. It is dots 2-4-5-6.

Where W turns up in Grade 2

Standing on its own with spaces either side, W is not a letter at all — it is the whole word “will”. Inside a longer word it goes back to being an ordinary w. That is the rule beginners trip on most: will is a single cell, but the w in a word like “was” is just a letter.

A contraction is one cell doing the work of two or more letters, which is why a Grade 2 page is roughly a quarter shorter than the same text in Grade 1. The complete Grade 2 reference lists all of them with the position rules that govern when they may be used.

Writing a capital W

Braille has no separate capital letters. A capital is the same cell with a marker in front of it: dot 6, sitting alone in its own cell. So capital W is two cells, not one.

Write that marker twice and it capitalises the entire word that follows, which is how braille handles something written in block capitals. A word in full capitals therefore costs two extra cells, however long it is.

Easily confused with

These letters differ from W by a single dot, which is where reading errors actually happen. Drill them against each other rather than in alphabetical order.

Practice words

Each word below starts with W, written in Grade 1 so every letter has its own cell.