Initial-letter contraction
“upon” in braille
Two cells for the whole word, however long it is — 4 letters here, a saving of 2 cells. “upon” is the 739th most common word in English.
Dots 4-5, then dots 1-3-6
Unicode ⠘⠥ — 4 letters in two cells
How to recognise it
A formal word that keeps a contraction out of proportion to how often anyone writes it, which is a good reminder that this list was fixed a long time ago. It shares its second cell — a u — with “under”.
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
“upon” and “under” 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| upon | dots 4-5 | 2 cells | |
| under | dots 5 | 3 cells |
Where it may appear inside a longer word
Anywhere 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 “upon”, checked against the reference, split by where the letters sat.
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 739th in English, you will meet “upon” standing on its own often enough to want the two cells rather than the 4 letters spelled out.
Where this site differs from a transcriber
A transcriber writes “coupons” without this contraction — the letters are there but the meaning is not. This site uses it anyway, because a position rule cannot see meaning. The coverage note gives the measured accuracy.
The other 4 words under dots 4-5
A small group, so the prefix is already a strong clue.
Check your own text
Type “upon” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.
“upon” in braille as an image
Both cells as a picture: dots 4 and 5, then dots 1, 3 and 6 — the whole word in two cells rather than 4 letters.
