Initial-letter contraction
“these” in braille
Two cells for the whole word, however long it is — 5 letters here, a saving of 3 cells. “these” is 93rd in the 5,000-word frequency list this site measures against.
Dots 4-5, then dots 2-3-4-6
Unicode ⠘⠮ — 5 letters in two cells
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 highest in the 5,000-word frequency list of the five words in the dots 4-5 group: “these” is 93rd, “those” 238th, “upon” 765th, “word” 810th and “whose” 1,881st. 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
The rulebook uses it inside a longer word only where the letters keep the meaning of “these” as a word of its own (Rules of Unified English Braille 10.7.2).
Whether the letters keep their meaning is not something a translator can read off the spelling, so this site uses the sign wherever the letters occur, except in the words the rulebook itself writes without it — hypotheses and Theseus — and the same words with an ending added. This site also leaves it out of theses and parentheses, 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. Without it: Theseus ⠠⠮⠎⠑⠥⠎; hypotheses ⠓⠽⠏⠕⠮⠎⠑⠎.
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 93rd of those 5,000.
The other 4 words under dots 4-5
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 14 times and saves 42 cells. That is 0.12% of everything Grade 2 saves in the book, and ranks it 109th of the 158 contractions used.
Every one of those is the word “these” itself.
Check your own text
Type “these” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.
“these” in braille as an image
Both cells as a picture: dots 4 and 5, then dots 2, 3, 4 and 6 — the whole word in two cells rather than 5 letters.
