“these” in braille

How to recognise it

The dots 4-5 prefix with the “the” groupsign after it, and the only member of its trio that is a plural. It is also the most common of the five words in the dots 4-5 group by a wide margin — the others are “those”, “upon”, “whose” and “word”, and none of them comes close. If you learn one dots 4-5 contraction, learn this one.

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

“these” and “there” and “their” 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

Only at the start 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 “these”, checked against the reference, split by where the letters sat.

In the in the middle and at the end the letters are the contraction less than half the time, so using it there would be wrong more often than right.

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: ranked 88th in English, you will meet “these” standing on its own often enough to want the two cells rather than the 5 letters spelled out.

The other 4 words under dots 4-5

A small group, so the prefix is already a strong clue.

those, upon, whose, word.

Check your own text

Type “these” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.