Initial-letter contraction
“lord” in braille
Two cells for the whole word, however long it is — 4 letters here, a saving of 2 cells. “lord” is 1,731st in the 5,000-word frequency list this site measures against.
Dots 5, then dots 1-2-3
Unicode ⠐⠇ — 4 letters in two cells
How to recognise it
Four letters in two cells: dot 5, then the letter l.
The second cell is the letter l
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. The rulebook sets apart chlordane, and the translator writes it as the rulebook does.
From the rulebook's own examples, as this site writes them. With the sign: Gaylord ⠠⠛⠁⠽⠐⠇; lordosis ⠐⠇⠕⠎⠊⠎; lordship ⠐⠇⠩⠊⠏. Without it: chlordane ⠡⠇⠕⠗⠙⠁⠝⠑.
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 1,731st 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, father, here, know, 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 never written: the word “lord” does not occur in the book. It is one of 24, out of 182, that the story has no use for.
Check your own text
Type “lord” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.
“lord” in braille as an image
Both cells as a picture: dot 5, then dots 1, 2 and 3 — the whole word in two cells rather than 4 letters.
