Initial-letter contraction
“character” in braille
Two cells for the whole word, however long it is — 9 letters here, a saving of 7 cells. “character” is 1,586th in the 5,000-word frequency list this site measures against.
Dots 5, then dots 1-6
Unicode ⠐⠡ — 9 letters in two cells
How to recognise it
Nine letters in two cells — the largest saving of any contraction in the code. The second cell is not a c but the ch groupsign, which is the pattern to expect from this list rather than the exception.
The second cell is the “ch” sign, not a c
You would expect a c. What follows the prefix is the ch groupsign, chosen for the shape of the word rather than its spelling. Nine of the thirty-three do this.
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.
From the rulebook's own examples, as this site writes them. With the sign: characterise ⠐⠡⠊⠎⠑; characteristic ⠐⠡⠊⠌⠊⠉.
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.
Longer words that keep it
2 words among the 5,000 commonest in English are written with this contraction inside them. These are some of them, and every one was taken from this site's own output rather than chosen by hand.
| Word | In braille (Grade 2) | Grade 1 | Grade 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| characters | 10 cells | 3 cells | |
| characteristics | 15 cells | 7 cells |
The other 21 words under dots 5
The largest of the three prefix groups, so the prefix itself tells you little — the second cell does the work.
day, ever, father, here, know, lord, mother, name, one, ought, part, question, right, some, there, through, time, under, where, work, young.
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 7 cells. That is 0.02% of everything Grade 2 saves in the book, and ranks it 148th of the 158 contractions used.
Every one of those is the word “character” itself.
Check your own text
Type “character” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.
“character” in braille as an image
Both cells as a picture: dot 5, then dots 1 and 6 — the whole word in two cells rather than 9 letters.
