Initial-letter contraction
“their” in braille
Two cells for the whole word, however long it is — 5 letters here, a saving of 3 cells. “their” is 58th in the 5,000-word frequency list this site measures against.
Dots 4-5-6, then dots 2-3-4-6
Unicode ⠸⠮ — 5 letters in two cells
How to recognise it
58th in the 5,000-word frequency list, the highest of the six words in the dots 4-5-6 group. Its second cell is the “the” groupsign, as it is in “there” and “these”: three two-cell contractions that differ only in their first cell.
The second cell is the “the” sign, not a t
You would expect a t. What follows the prefix is the the groupsign, chosen for the shape of the word rather than its spelling. Nine of the thirty-three do this.
Learn it with its two sisters
“their” and “there” and “these” 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: wherever the letters occur, the sign is used.
From the rulebook's own examples, as this site writes them. With the sign: theirs ⠸⠮⠎.
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 58th of those 5,000.
The other 5 words under dots 4-5-6
A small group, so the prefix is already a strong clue.
In a whole book
In a count over the whole of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (26,439 words), this contraction is written 53 times and saves 159 cells. That is 0.46% of everything Grade 2 saves in the book, and ranks it 54th of the 158 contractions used.
The words it is written in: their (52), theirs (1).
Check your own text
Type “their” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.
“their” in braille as an image
Both cells as a picture: dots 4, 5 and 6, then dots 2, 3, 4 and 6 — the whole word in two cells rather than 5 letters.
