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braille pattern dots-156

Braille Pattern Dots-156

The Braille pattern ⠱ (dots 1-5-6) has no single reading: its meaning depends on the Braille code and language. In English Braille, it can stand for the letters “wh” inside a word or the whole word “which”; other systems assign it differently. Louis Braille reshaped Charles Barbier’s raised-dot military code for reading messages in the dark into a six-dot system by 1824 and published it in 1829.

Text symbol
Also called
dots-156 · braille 156
Search it as
Braille dots 1-5-6 · Braille wh · which contraction Braille · Braille ASCII colon
Shows up in
Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws

What ⠱ means

⠱ is the braille pattern dots-156. Unicode classifies it as an “other symbol” — Unicode's shelf for signs that are neither maths, money nor punctuation and files it in the Braille Patterns block; this site shelves it under Lines & boxes.

Its appearance depends on the font and text styling.

How it is encoded

⠱ is a single code point, U+2831. In HTML that is ⠱, and in CSS \2831.

Don't confuse it with

4
⠁
Braille Pattern Dots-1
shares “braille”, “dots”, “pattern”
⠂
Braille Pattern Dots-2
shares “braille”, “dots”, “pattern”
⠃
Braille Pattern Dots-12
shares “braille”, “dots”, “pattern”
⠄
Braille Pattern Dots-3
shares “braille”, “dots”, “pattern”

Questions people ask

1

Why does ⠱ show as a box on some devices?

Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.

How to type ⠱

Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 2831, then Alt+X to get ⠱.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “braille pattern dots-156”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 2831, then Enter or Space.
HTML
⠱
CSS
\2831
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
⠱
HTML hex
⠱
CSS content
content: "\2831";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%A0%B1
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes

A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.

Families this belongs to

1

Braille256 symbols

⠀⠁⠂⠃⠄⠅⠆⠇⠈⠉⠊⠋