Dot number
Dots 1-3-4-5-6 in braille
Dots 1-3-4-5-6 is the letter y — and one other thing besides, because one cell in braille almost never means one thing. The raised positions are 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6, out of the six a cell has.
Dots 1-3-4-5-6
Unicode ⠽ — U+283D, 2 dots on the left and 3 dots on the right
The 2 things this cell can be
One cell, 2 jobs. Which one applies is decided by where the cell sits — beside a letter, between two, or alone between spaces — and never by the cell itself.
| Reading | Kind | Where it applies |
|---|---|---|
| the letter y | Letter | Anywhere |
| the word “you” standing alone | Wordsign | Standing alone between spaces |
Where you will meet it
Taken from the five thousand commonest English words in frequency order, so the first one is a word you will meet constantly. Each is drawn in Grade 2, where the cell actually appears.
| Word | In braille | How common |
|---|---|---|
| by | 10th commonest | |
| you | 13th commonest | |
| your | 22nd commonest | |
| my | 37th commonest |
The same cell in the other codes
Braille is not one code. This site publishes five, and they do not put this cell to the same use. Text written with one table and read with another does not come out as an accent or two — it comes out as different words.
| Code | What this cell is |
|---|---|
| Unified English Braille | the letter y, and the word “you” standing alone |
| Spanish braille | the letter y |
| Portuguese braille | the letter y |
| Arabic braille | the letter ئ |
| Hindi braille | the letter य |
In UEB this cell is the letter y, and the word “you” standing alone. In Arabic, the letter ئ — and in Hindi, the letter य. Spanish has seven letters outside a-z and Portuguese has thirteen, each a single cell where UEB spends three, and every one of them lands on a cell UEB had already given to something else. That is why the codes cannot be mixed, and it is the part no chart shows you.
One dot away
Under the fingers a missed or imagined dot turns this cell into 6 others. These are the ones to check against when a word will not resolve.
| Cell | Dots | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| 1-3-4-5 | the letter n; the word “not” standing alone | |
| 1-3-4-6 | the letter x; the word “it” standing alone | |
| 1-3-5-6 | the letter z; the word “as” standing alone | |
| 1-4-5-6 | the letters th inside a word, and the word “this” alone | |
| 3-4-5-6 | the number sign | |
| 1-2-3-4-5-6 | the letters for inside a word, and the word “for” alone |
Look up something else
The braille dot numbers page takes any combination of the six, the decoder reads a whole passage back, and the chart runs the other way, from the letter to the dots.
Dots 1-3-4-5-6 as an image
The cell on its own: dots 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 filled, the other one position shown empty — which is the part a description in words tends to leave out.
