Dot number
Dot 2 in braille
Dot 2 is the letters ea between two letters — and one other thing besides, because one cell in braille almost never means one thing. It is the one raised position out of the six a cell has.
Dot 2
Unicode ⠂ — U+2802, 1 dot on the left and nothing 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 ea between two letters | Lower sign | By position inside a word |
| the comma | Punctuation | By position |
Where you will meet it
Taken from the five thousand commonest English words in frequency order, so these are ordinary words rather than curiosities. Each is drawn in Grade 2, where the cell actually appears.
| Word | In braille | How common |
|---|---|---|
| health | 111th commonest | |
| please | 136th commonest | |
| read | 168th commonest | |
| real | 199th 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 ea between two letters, and the comma |
| Spanish braille | the mark , |
| Portuguese braille | the mark , |
| Arabic braille | the fatha, a short a |
| Hindi braille | avagraha |
One dot away
Under the fingers a missed or imagined dot turns this cell into 5 others. These are the ones to check against when a word will not resolve.
| Cell | Dots | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | the letter b; the word “but” standing alone; the digit 2 after a number sign | |
| 2-3 | the letters bb between two letters; the prefix be- at the start of a word; the word “be” standing alone; the semicolon | |
| 2-4 | the letter i; the digit 9 after a number sign | |
| 2-5 | the letters cc between two letters; the prefix con- at the start of a word; the colon | |
| 2-6 | the letters en inside a word; the word “enough” standing alone |
Look up something else
The dot-number lookup 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.
Dot 2 as an image
The cell on its own: dot 2 filled, the other five positions shown empty — which is the part a description in words tends to leave out.
