What ⢍ means
The filled dots are 1, 3, 4 and 8. A Braille cell is a small group of dot positions arranged in two columns. In eight-dot Braille, the left column runs 1, 2, 3, 7 from top to bottom; the right runs 4, 5, 6, 8. So ⢍ has the top and third dots on the left, and the top and bottom dots on the right.
Unicode preserves this arrangement without assigning it a single linguistic meaning. A particular Braille code supplies the reading. On an ordinary screen, ⢍ is a visible text character; tactile output requires equipment such as a Braille embosser, which makes raised dots on paper.
Why does Braille have six or eight dots?
Eight-dot Braille extends the six-dot cell with a bottom row. Braille is a system of raised dots read by touch. In 1821, a Paris school for blind pupils tried Charles Barbier’s 12-dot writing system. Louis Braille developed a smaller six-dot cell that could fit under one fingertip and published his method in 1829.
Eight-dot Braille keeps the original six positions and places dots 7 and 8 underneath them. This gives 256 possible patterns, including the blank cell, compared with 64 for six dots.
Part of the collection
Related characters
1
Questions people ask
1Is a picture made from Braille characters readable as Braille?
Not necessarily. Braille characters can form dot-based text art, where their shapes build a picture rather than spell words. A picture containing ⢍ does not by itself establish a Braille reading.
More like this
8
How to type or find ⢍
- Search it as
- braille pattern · eight-dot braille · Unicode braille
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⢍\288DCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.