Dot number
Dots 2-3-5-6 in braille
Dots 2-3-5-6 is the letters gg between two letters — and one other thing besides, because one cell in braille almost never means one thing. The raised positions are 2, 3, 5 and 6, out of the six a cell has.
Dots 2-3-5-6
Unicode ⠶ — U+2836, 2 dots on the left and 2 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 letters gg between two letters | Lower sign | By position inside a word |
| the word “were” 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 |
|---|---|---|
| were | 84th commonest | |
| suggest | 2173rd commonest | |
| logged | 2476th commonest | |
| suggestions | 2534th 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 letters gg between two letters, and the word “were” standing alone |
| Spanish braille | the mark = |
| Portuguese braille | the mark = |
| Arabic braille | the marks " and “ (and 1 other sharing the cell) |
| Hindi braille | no reading of its own — see its alphabet |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2-3-5 | the letters ff between two letters; the exclamation mark | |
| 2-3-6 | the word “his” standing alone; the question mark; opening double quote | |
| 2-5-6 | the prefix dis- at the start of a word; the full stop / period | |
| 3-5-6 | the word “was” standing alone; closing double quote | |
| 1-2-3-5-6 | the letters of inside a word, and the word “of” alone | |
| 2-3-4-5-6 | the letters with inside a word, and the word “with” alone |
Look up something else
The dot picker 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 2-3-5-6 as an image
The cell on its own: dots 2, 3, 5 and 6 filled, the other two positions shown empty — which is the part a description in words tends to leave out.
