“work” in braille

How to recognise it

The busiest of the three w contractions by a distance: twelve of the 5,000 commonest words are written with it inside them, against four for “word” and one for “world”. Network, working, workers, networking — it holds together through every ending English can attach. It also takes the plain dot 5 prefix, the one that carries twenty-two of the thirty-three, so it is the easiest of the trio to reach for.

The second cell is the letter w

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 two sisters

“work” and “word” and “world” 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

Only at the start and in the middle and at the end and 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 “work”, checked against the reference, split by where the letters sat.

Longer words that keep it

12 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, under, where, young.

Check your own text

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