Initial-letter contraction
“father” in braille
Two cells for the whole word, however long it is — 6 letters here, a saving of 4 cells. “father” is 1,692nd in the 5,000-word frequency list this site measures against.
Dots 5, then dots 1-2-4
Unicode ⠐⠋ — 6 letters in two cells
How to recognise it
Six letters in two cells. Its second cell is an f, which is the straightforward half of this list — no groupsign, no surprise. Learn it beside “mother”, which is the same length, saves the same four cells, and is the only other family word the code contracts; the two were chosen together and are worth learning together.
The second cell is the letter f
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.
From the rulebook's own examples, as this site writes them. With the sign: father-in-law ⠐⠋⠤⠔⠤⠇⠁⠺; fatherless ⠐⠋⠨⠎; grandfather ⠛⠗⠯⠐⠋.
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
The rule allows it inside a longer word, but none of the 5,000 commonest English words actually takes it there. 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. What it does have is the word itself, which stands 1,692nd of those 5,000.
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.
character, day, ever, 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 6 times and saves 24 cells. That is 0.07% of everything Grade 2 saves in the book, and ranks it 121st of the 158 contractions used.
Every one of those is the word “father” itself.
Check your own text
Type “father” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.
“father” in braille as an image
Both cells as a picture: dot 5, then dots 1, 2 and 4 — the whole word in two cells rather than 6 letters.
