“under” in braille

How to recognise it

At the start of a word it is almost always the contraction — understand, underground, undergo. The exceptions the rulebook gives are words where the letters follow an a or an o, as in flounder and laundering, and words where “un” is a prefix, as in underived.

The second cell is the letter u

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

“under” and “upon” 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 except where the letters follow an a or an o, or where “un” is a prefix (Rules of Unified English Braille 10.7.9).

The part of that rule spelling can settle, this site applies exactly as written: after an a or an o the letters are spelled out. Whether “un” is a prefix is not something a translator can read off the spelling, so everywhere else it uses the sign, except in the words the rulebook itself writes without it — underived and underogatory — and the same words with an ending added.

From the rulebook's own examples, as this site writes them. With the sign: misunderstand ⠍⠊⠎⠐⠥⠌⠯; thundered ⠹⠐⠥⠫; Wunderhorn ⠠⠺⠐⠥⠓⠕⠗⠝. Without it: flounder ⠋⠇⠨⠙⠻; Saunders ⠠⠎⠁⠥⠝⠙⠻⠎; laundering ⠇⠁⠥⠝⠙⠻⠬.

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.

Longer words that keep it

4 words among the 5,000 commonest in English are written with this contraction inside them. These are some of them, and every one was taken from this site's own output rather than chosen by hand.

The other 21 words under dots 5

The largest of the three prefix groups, so the prefix itself tells you little — the second cell does the work.

character, day, ever, father, here, know, lord, mother, name, one, ought, part, question, right, some, there, through, time, where, work, young.

In a whole book

In a count over the whole of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (26,439 words), this contraction is written 29 times and saves 87 cells. That is 0.25% of everything Grade 2 saves in the book, and ranks it 78th of the 158 contractions used.

The words it is written in most: under (16), understand (6), underneath (2), undertone (2), thunder (1) — 7 different words in all.

Check your own text

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