Initial-letter contraction
“those” in braille
Two cells for the whole word, however long it is — 5 letters here, a saving of 3 cells. “those” is 238th in the 5,000-word frequency list this site measures against.
Dots 4-5, then dots 1-4-5-6
Unicode ⠘⠹ — 5 letters in two cells
How to recognise it
The dots 4-5 prefix with the th groupsign, and the one contraction on this list that is barred from longer words that do contain it. Nineteen dictionary words hold these five letters, and a transcriber spells them out in every one.
The second cell is the “th” sign, not a t
You would expect a t. What follows the prefix is the th groupsign, chosen for the shape of the word rather than its spelling. Nine of the thirty-three do this.
Learn it with its sister
“those” and “through” 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| those | dots 4-5 | 3 cells | |
| through | dots 5 | 5 cells |
Where it may appear inside a longer word
The rulebook uses it inside a longer word only where the letters keep the meaning of “those” 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 — spathose and Thoseby — and the same words with an ending added.
From the rulebook's own examples, as this site writes them. Without it: spathose ⠎⠏⠁⠹⠕⠎⠑; Thoseby ⠠⠹⠕⠎⠑⠃⠽.
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
That makes it unusual. 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 238th 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 10 times and saves 30 cells. That is 0.09% of everything Grade 2 saves in the book, and ranks it 117th of the 158 contractions used.
Every one of those is the word “those” itself.
Check your own text
Type “those” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.
“those” in braille as an image
Both cells as a picture: dots 4 and 5, then dots 1, 4, 5 and 6 — the whole word in two cells rather than 5 letters.
