Punctuation
The semicolon in braille
Semicolon is dots 2 and 3 — a single cell.
2-3
One cell — semicolon
How to recognise it
Dots 2 and 3, a short vertical pair low in the cell.
It is the letter b moved down a row
Take the cell for b and slide every dot down one position — dot 1 becomes dot 2, dot 4 becomes dot 5 — and you have the semicolon. Six of the eight single-cell marks were built this way, which means a reader who knows the first ten letters already knows the shapes and only has to remember they sit lower in the cell.
In a sentence
Here is the semicolon doing its job, written in Grade 1 so every letter has its own cell.
It rained; we stayed in.
Try your own text in the translator, or paste braille into the decoder to read it back.
Marks it is confused with
These differ by a single dot. Punctuation is harder to tell apart than letters because the marks are small and sit low in the cell, so a missing dot is easy to miss.
| Cell | Mark | Dots |
|---|---|---|
| Comma | 2 | |
| Question mark | 2-3-6 | |
| Exclamation mark | 2-3-5 | |
| Apostrophe | 3 |
The semicolon as an image
The cell is dots 2 and 3, with the top row empty — which is what tells a reader it is punctuation and not a letter.
