The braille alphabet explained: the six-dot cell, letters and grades

Braille is a tactile writing system in which each character is a cell of up to six raised dots, arranged in two columns of three. The letters a to z are built from a simple pattern that repeats in three rows of ten, and a few extra signs mark capitals and numbers. Most published English braille also uses contractions, short forms for common words and letter groups. The braille translator converts text to uncontracted braille and back, and this guide explains how the system fits together.

The six-dot cell

The dot positions are numbered 1, 2 and 3 down the left column and 4, 5 and 6 down the right. Any combination of raised dots can form a character, which gives 64 possible patterns including the blank cell used as a space. That small number is why braille characters often have more than one meaning depending on context: the same cell can be a letter, a digit or part of a contraction. The cell is sized to sit under a single fingertip, so a reader feels each character without moving the finger around it.

How the letters are built

The alphabet is organised in rows of ten, often called decades:

• a to j use only the top four dots (1, 2, 4 and 5). For example a is dot 1, b is dots 1 and 2, and c is dots 1 and 4.
• k to t repeat a to j with dot 3 added, so k is a plus dot 3 and l is b plus dot 3.
• u, v, x, y and z repeat a to e with dots 3 and 6 added.

The odd one out is w. Louis Braille designed the system for French, whose alphabet at the time did not include w, so w was given a spare pattern (dots 2, 4, 5 and 6) rather than a place in the sequence. Once you know the first ten letters, the rest follow.

Capitals, numbers and punctuation

Braille has no separate capital letters. Instead, a capital sign (dot 6) goes in front of the letter. Numbers reuse the first decade: a number sign (dots 3, 4, 5 and 6) means the letters a to j that follow are the digits 1 to 9 and 0. So "Hello 2026" becomes ⠠⠓⠑⠇⠇⠕ ⠼⠃⠚⠃⠋, with the capital sign before the h and a single number sign before the whole number. Punctuation uses lower-placed dot patterns: a full stop, a comma and a question mark each have their own cell. My translator applies these rules in both directions and detects which way to translate from what you paste.

Grade 1 and Grade 2 braille

Grade 1, or uncontracted braille, spells every word letter by letter. It is used by beginners and for some labels, and it is what my translator produces. Grade 2, or contracted braille, is the standard for books, magazines and most signage in English. It saves space and reading time with roughly 180 contractions: the words and, for, of, the and with each have a single cell, common letter groups such as ch, sh and ing have their own signs, and single letters standing alone mean whole words, so b alone means but and c alone means can. Contractions are why Grade 2 needs careful rules, and why a letter-for-letter translator is right for learning and short messages but not for producing documents for experienced readers.

Louis Braille and night writing

Louis Braille was born in France in 1809 and lost his sight after an accident with an awl in his father's workshop at the age of three. At school in Paris he met a system of raised dots devised by Charles Barbier, later called night writing, which used cells of up to twelve dots representing sounds. It was too big to read with one fingertip and could not spell properly. In 1824, at the age of fifteen, Braille developed his own code based on the alphabet, cut the cell to six dots, and published it in 1829, later adding music notation.

Braille today

English-speaking countries now largely use Unified English Braille (UEB), a common code that the UK adopted in 2011 and the Braille Authority of North America adopted in 2012. Braille appears on lift buttons, signs and medicine packaging, and many blind readers use refreshable braille displays, rows of small pins that rise and fall to show text from a computer or phone. On screen, braille cells are characters in their own Unicode block, which is how the translator's output can be copied and pasted; the Unicode inspector shows their code points, and UTF-8 explained: how text is stored, and why it turns into é and ’ explains how such characters are stored. If you enjoy codes built from dots, the Morse code translator and The Morse code alphabet make an interesting comparison: Morse encodes letters in time, braille in space.