Initial-letter contraction
“under” in braille
Two cells for the whole word, however long it is — 5 letters here, a saving of 3 cells. “under” is the 178th most common word in English.
Dots 5, then dots 1-3-6
Unicode ⠐⠥ — 5 letters in two cells
How to recognise it
The one contraction here with a genuinely lopsided position rule: at the start of a longer word it is right 99% of the time (understand, underground), in the middle 73%, and at the end only 44%. So this engine uses it in the first two positions and not the third.
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.
| Word | Cells | Prefix | Cells saved |
|---|---|---|---|
| under | dots 5 | 3 cells | |
| upon | dots 4-5 | 2 cells |
Where it may appear inside a longer word
Only at the start and in the middle 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 “under”, checked against the reference, split by where the letters sat.
In the at the end the letters are the contraction less than half the time, so using it there would be wrong more often than right.
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.
| Word | In braille (Grade 2) | Grade 1 | Grade 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| understand | 10 cells | 4 cells | |
| understanding | 13 cells | 5 cells | |
| underground | 11 cells | 6 cells | |
| undergraduate | 13 cells | 10 cells |
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.
Check your own text
Type “under” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.
“under” in braille as an image
Both cells as a picture: dot 5, then dots 1, 3 and 6 — the whole word in two cells rather than 5 letters.
