Initial-letter contraction
“one” in braille
Two cells for the whole word, however long it is — 3 letters here, a saving of 1 cell. “one” is 45th in the 5,000-word frequency list this site measures against.
Dots 5, then dots 1-3-5
Unicode ⠐⠕ — 3 letters in two cells
How to recognise it
45th in the 5,000-word frequency list, higher than any other word on this list, yet it saves only one cell. Its interest is entirely in where it may appear inside a longer word, and the rule for that is set out below.
The second cell is the letter o
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 where the letters are said as one syllable, in any word ending “oney”, and in honest and monetary and the words made from them — but never straight after an o (Rules of Unified English Braille 10.7.6).
The part of that rule spelling can settle, this site applies exactly as written: after an o the letters are spelled out. Whether the letters are one syllable is not something a translator can read off the spelling, so everywhere else it uses the sign, except in the words the rulebook itself writes without it — anemone, baroness, baronet, Cantonese, colonel, Conestoga, cushioned, Donegal, erroneous, Hermione, Indonesia, krone, Monet, onerous, phonetic, pioneer, poisoned and stoned — and the same words with an ending added. This site also leaves it out of commonest, argemone, cicerone, abalone, Persephone, Antigone, Indonesian, bayonet, Lionel, marionette and salmonella, which the rulebook does not name but which follow the same rule; liblouis 3.39.0 writes them the same way.
From the rulebook's own examples, as this site writes them. With the sign: Jones ⠠⠚⠐⠕⠎; baloney ⠃⠁⠇⠐⠕⠽; demonetise ⠙⠑⠍⠐⠕⠞⠊⠎⠑. Without it: baroness ⠃⠜⠕⠰⠎; baronet ⠃⠜⠕⠝⠑⠞; Cantonese ⠠⠉⠁⠝⠞⠕⠝⠑⠎⠑.
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.
Longer words that keep it
20 words among the 5,000 commonest in English are written with this contraction inside them. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| phone | 5 cells | 4 cells | |
| phones | 6 cells | 5 cells | |
| done | 4 cells | 3 cells | |
| none | 4 cells | 3 cells | |
| someone | 7 cells | 4 cells | |
| anyone | 6 cells | 5 cells |
Words where it is written out instead
| Word | Written as | Why |
|---|---|---|
| component | the rulebook writes it with the en sign instead, c-o-m-p-o-n-en-t (10.10.7) | |
| indonesia | the rulebook's own example of a word written without it: the letters are not said as one syllable (10.7.6) |
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, mother, name, 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 192 times and saves 192 cells. That is 0.56% of everything Grade 2 saves in the book, and ranks it 47th of the 158 contractions used.
The words it is written in most: one (103), tone (40), done (15), gone (13), alone (4) — 16 different words in all.
Check your own text
Type “one” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.
“one” in braille as an image
Both cells as a picture: dot 5, then dots 1, 3 and 5 — the whole word in two cells rather than 3 letters.
