“mother” in braille

How to recognise it

Six letters in two cells, sharing its second cell with “many” — the same m, told apart by the prefix. Inside a longer word it is allowed at the start and end but not the middle, which is measured rather than decreed.

The second cell is the letter m

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

“mother” and “many” 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.

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 chemotherapy, and the translator writes it as the rulebook does.

From the rulebook's own examples, as this site writes them. With the sign: godmother ⠛⠕⠙⠐⠍; motherly ⠐⠍⠇⠽; mother-of-pearl ⠐⠍⠤⠷⠤⠏⠑⠜⠇. Without it: chemotherapy ⠡⠑⠍⠕⠮⠗⠁⠏⠽.

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 1,430th 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, lord, 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 “mother” 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 “mother” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.