Dot number
Dots 4-5 in braille
Dots 4-5 is the opening cell of 5 initial-letter contractions. The raised positions are 4 and 5, out of the six a cell has.
Dots 4-5
Unicode ⠘ — U+2818, nothing 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 opening cell of 5 initial-letter contractions | Prefix | these, those, upon, whose, word |
In full UEB this cell also begins a set of symbol and accent signs — © and °, and the accented letters in café and naïve are all written with it. This engine covers letters, numbers, punctuation and the Grade 2 contractions, so it does not produce them, and a page here will not show you one.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| these | 88th commonest | |
| those | 224th commonest | |
| password | 561st commonest | |
| upon | 739th 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 opening cell of 5 initial-letter contractions |
| Spanish braille | no reading of its own — see its alphabet |
| Portuguese braille | no reading of its own — see its alphabet |
| Arabic braille | no reading of its own — see its alphabet |
| Hindi braille | the letter भ |
In UEB this cell is the opening cell of 5 initial-letter contractions. In Hindi, the letter भ. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | a prefix for symbols this site does not write | |
| 5 | the opening cell of 22 initial-letter contractions | |
| 1-4-5 | the letter d; the word “do” standing alone; the digit 4 after a number sign | |
| 2-4-5 | the letter j; the word “just” standing alone; the digit 0 after a number sign | |
| 3-4-5 | the letters ar inside a word | |
| 4-5-6 | the opening cell of 6 initial-letter contractions |
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 4-5 as an image
The cell on its own: dots 4 and 5 filled, the other four positions shown empty — which is the part a description in words tends to leave out.
