Dot number
Dots 2-4-6 in braille
Dots 2-4-6 is the letters ow inside a word. The raised positions are 2, 4 and 6, out of the six a cell has.
Dots 2-4-6
Unicode ⠪ — U+282A, 1 dot on the left and 2 dots on the right
What this cell is
This cell has a single job, which is unusual: most of the sixty-three carry more than one.
| Reading | Kind | Where it applies |
|---|---|---|
| the letters ow inside a word | Groupsign | Inside a word, and alone where noted |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| now | 73rd commonest | |
| how | 83rd commonest | |
| show | 252nd commonest | |
| own | 277th 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 ow inside a word |
| Spanish braille | no reading of its own — see its alphabet |
| Portuguese braille | the letter õ |
| Arabic braille | no reading of its own — see its alphabet |
| Hindi braille | the letter औ, and the matra for औ |
In UEB this cell is the letters ow inside a word. In Portuguese, the letter õ — and in Hindi, the letter औ. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2-4 | the letter i; the digit 9 after a number sign | |
| 2-6 | the letters en inside a word; the word “enough” standing alone | |
| 4-6 | the opening cell of 5 final-letter contractions | |
| 1-2-4-6 | the letters ed inside a word | |
| 2-3-4-6 | the letters the inside a word, and the word “the” alone | |
| 2-4-5-6 | the letter w; the word “will” standing 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 2-4-6 as an image
The cell on its own: dots 2, 4 and 6 filled, the other three positions shown empty — which is the part a description in words tends to leave out.
