Dot number
Dot 4 in braille
Dot 4 has no reading of its own. It is the one raised position out of the six a cell has.
Dot 4
Unicode ⠈ — U+2808, nothing on the left and 1 dot on the right
This cell is a prefix, not a sign
Nothing in this site's tables is written with dot 4 on its own. It is a prefix: it changes the cell that follows rather than saying anything itself, and every symbol it opens is outside what this engine writes.
In full UEB this cell also begins a set of currency and symbol signs — $, @, &, £, € and ¢ 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.
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 | nothing — it is a prefix, not a sign |
| 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 halant |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 1-4 | the letter c; the word “can” standing alone; the digit 3 after a number sign | |
| 2-4 | the letter i; the digit 9 after a number sign | |
| 3-4 | the letters st inside a word, and the word “still” alone | |
| 4-5 | the opening cell of 5 initial-letter contractions | |
| 4-6 | the opening cell of 5 final-letter contractions |
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 4 as an image
The cell on its own: dot 4 filled, the other five positions shown empty — which is the part a description in words tends to leave out.
