Final-letter contraction
The “-less” ending in braille
Two cells for 4 letters — a prefix saying an ending follows, then the letter s.
Dots 4-6, then dots 2-3-4
Unicode ⠨⠎ — two cells replacing 4 letters
How to recognise it
Dots 4-6 then the letter s. The same four letters end many words and also start the word “less”, and the two readings are kept apart by nothing more than position.
The prefix cell means nothing on its own
Read alone, dots 4-6 is not a letter and not a word. Its only job is to say that the cell after it stands for a whole ending rather than for the letter it looks like — without it, “wireless” would end in a plain s. That is why these are called two-cell contractions: neither half works by itself.
5 endings share this prefix — -ound, -ount, -ance, -sion and this one. The second cell is what separates them, and in every case it is the ending's own last letter, so there is nothing extra to memorise.
Do not confuse it with “-ness”
These two share their second cell exactly. “-less” and “-ness” both end in the letter s, and the only difference between them is the prefix: dots 4-6 against dots 5-6. Both keep dot 6; the difference is dot 4 against dot 5, one directly above the other. If you misread one of these two, it will be as the other.
| Ending | Cells | Prefix | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| -less | dots 4-6 | ||
| -ness | dots 5-6 |
It never opens a word
Every final-letter contraction is barred from the start of a word. The prefix cell would have nothing before it to attach to, and a reader meeting it first would have no way to know an ending was coming. So a word that happens to begin with these letters is spelled out in full.
| Word | Written as | Why |
|---|---|---|
| less | the whole word is those letters, and the contraction cannot open a word | |
| lesson | same rule — the letters are at the front, so they are spelled out |
How often you will meet it
Of the 5,000 most common English words, 4 words use this ending. The twelve final-letter contractions are nowhere near equally useful: this range runs from 206 down to 4. The contraction list gives the whole ranking.
Words that use it
Each of these is shorter in Grade 2 than in Grade 1, and none was chosen by hand — they come from the reference implementation's own output for the commonest English words, and this site still writes every one of them the same way, cell for cell.
| Word | In braille (Grade 2) | Grade 1 | Grade 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| wireless | 8 cells | 6 cells | |
| unless | 6 cells | 4 cells | |
| stainless | 9 cells | 5 cells | |
| regardless | 10 cells | 7 cells |
In a whole book
In a count over the whole of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (26,439 words), this contraction is written 5 times and saves 10 cells. That is 0.03% of everything Grade 2 saves in the book, and ranks it 144th of the 158 contractions used.
The words it is written in: unless (2), helpless (1), hopeless (1), nevertheless (1).
Check your own text
Type a word ending in “-less” into the translator with Grade 2 selected and you will see both cells appear. The full contraction list covers the rest of Grade 2, and Grade 1 versus Grade 2 explains when contracted braille is the right choice at all.
The “-less” ending as an image
Both cells as a picture: dots 4 and 6 to announce an ending, then dots 2, 3 and 4 to name it.
