“cannot” in braille

How to recognise it

Six letters in two cells, and the only contraction here for what is arguably two words. Nothing in English contains it, so this is one to learn as a whole and move on.

The second cell is the letter c

The second cell is the word's own first letter — the simpler half of this list. The other nine use a groupsign instead.

Where it may appear inside a longer word

The rulebook uses it wherever its letters occur, unless another rule limits it (Rules of Unified English Braille 10.7.1).

This site does the same: wherever the letters occur, the sign is used.

As with every contraction, it is not used where its letters would reach across the join between the parts of a compound word (10.11).

Updated 27 September 2026. Until 18 September this section gave the positions — start, middle, end — where the sign agreed with the reference translator more often than not, and the translator followed those. It follows the rule above now; the survey explains what changed and why.

You will meet it as a word, not a fragment

That makes it unusual. Some on this list earn most of their keep buried in longer words — “part” turns up in nineteen of them — but this is not one of those. Nor is the word itself in that 5,000, so this is one to recognise on sight rather than one to drill.

The other 5 words under dots 4-5-6

A small group, so the prefix is already a strong clue.

had, many, spirit, their, world.

In a whole book

In a count over the whole of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (26,439 words), this contraction is written 1 time and saves 4 cells. That is 0.01% of everything Grade 2 saves in the book, and ranks it 154th of the 158 contractions used.

Every one of those is the word “cannot” itself.

Check your own text

Type “cannot” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.