Dot number
Dots 5-6 in braille
Dots 5-6 is the letter sign — and 2 other things besides, because one cell in braille almost never means one thing. The raised positions are 5 and 6, out of the six a cell has.
Dots 5-6
Unicode ⠰ — U+2830, nothing on the left and 2 dots on the right
The 3 things this cell can be
One cell, 3 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 letter sign | Indicator | Marks a letter as standing for itself, not a contraction. |
| the grade 1 symbol | Indicator | Suspends contraction rules for the next symbol. |
| the opening cell of 7 final-letter contractions | Prefix | ong, ful, ment, ence, ness, tion and 1 more |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| information | 47th commonest | |
| business | 69th commonest | |
| city | 131st commonest | |
| university | 181st 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 letter sign, and the grade 1 symbol (and 1 other) |
| Spanish braille | no reading of its own — see its alphabet |
| Portuguese braille | no reading of its own — see its alphabet |
| Arabic braille | the letter sign |
| Hindi braille | anusvara |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | the opening cell of 22 initial-letter contractions | |
| 6 | the capital letter sign; the capital word sign, written twice | |
| 1-5-6 | the letters wh inside a word, and the word “which” alone | |
| 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 | |
| 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 5-6 as an image
The cell on its own: dots 5 and 6 filled, the other four positions shown empty — which is the part a description in words tends to leave out.
