Initial-letter contraction
“spirit” in braille
Two cells for the whole word, however long it is — 6 letters here, a saving of 4 cells. “spirit” is the 2155th most common word in English.
Dots 4-5-6, then dots 2-3-4
Unicode ⠸⠎ — 6 letters in two cells
How to recognise it
Six letters in two cells. Like “lord” it is a survival from the era the code was designed in, though this one still earns its place in ordinary writing — spiritual keeps it.
The second cell is the letter s
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
“spirit” and “some” 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| spirit | dots 4-5-6 | 4 cells | |
| some | dots 5 | 2 cells |
Where it may appear inside a longer word
Only at the start and in the middle and 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 “spirit”, checked against the reference, split by where the letters sat.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| spiritual | 9 cells | 5 cells |
The other 5 words under dots 4-5-6
A small group, so the prefix is already a strong clue.
Check your own text
Type “spirit” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.
“spirit” in braille as an image
Both cells as a picture: dots 4, 5 and 6, then dots 2, 3 and 4 — the whole word in two cells rather than 6 letters.
