Initial-letter contraction
“here” in braille
Two cells for the whole word, however long it is — 4 letters here, a saving of 2 cells. “here” is the 68th most common word in English.
Dots 5, then dots 1-2-5
Unicode ⠐⠓ — 4 letters in two cells
How to recognise it
The letters “here” end three other very common words — there, where, and here itself — and the code handles that by giving each its own contraction rather than reusing this one. Inside a longer word this sign is allowed only at the end.
The second cell is the letter h
The second cell is the word's own first letter — the simpler half of this list. The other nine use a groupsign instead.
Learn it with its sister
“here” and “had” are written with the same second cell. Only the prefix separates them, which means the hard work of telling them apart is done by one cell — and learning them as a set is far quicker than meeting them one at a time.
| Word | Cells | Prefix | Cells saved |
|---|---|---|---|
| here | dots 5 | 2 cells | |
| had | dots 4-5-6 | 1 cell |
Where it may appear inside a longer word
Only at the end and of a word. UEB allows these inside a longer word only where the letters keep their meaning, which spelling cannot decide, so this site settled it by counting: every English word containing “here”, checked against the reference, split by where the letters sat.
In the at the start and in the middle the letters are the contraction less than half the time, so using it there would be wrong more often than right.
Longer words that keep it
1 word among the 5,000 commonest in English is written with this contraction inside it. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| atmosphere | 10 cells | 8 cells |
Words where it is written out instead
| Word | Written as | Why |
|---|---|---|
| there | it has a contraction of its own, which is two cells for five letters rather than two for four | |
| elsewhere | the where contraction claims those letters first |
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, father, know, lord, mother, name, one, ought, part, question, right, some, there, through, time, under, where, work, young.
Check your own text
Type “here” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.
“here” in braille as an image
Both cells as a picture: dot 5, then dots 1, 2 and 5 — the whole word in two cells rather than 4 letters.
