What ⢦ means
Two are on the left, two on the right. A braille cell is a small grid with two columns. In ⢦, the left column has dots in the second and third rows; the right has dots in the third and fourth rows.
Read from top to bottom, the left-hand positions are numbered 1, 2, 3, 7 and the right-hand positions 4, 5, 6, 8. The bottom pair extends the traditional six-dot cell. These numbers identify positions, not a number written in braille; to translate the pattern into text, you need the braille code being used.
Why does braille use eight dots?
Eight dots allow more patterns in a single cell. Braille is writing read by touch through raised dots. A refreshable braille display raises and lowers small pins to present changing text beneath the fingers.
An eight-dot cell has 256 possible patterns, including the empty cell, compared with 64 for six dots. The extra combinations help computer braille represent more characters. On an ordinary screen, ⢦ is only a visual representation of those dots.
A braille pattern with no conversational tone of its own.
A visible braille character does not by itself make text accessible by touch.
Part of the collection
Related characters
1
Worth knowing
- Louis Braille developed his six-dot system from Charles Barbier’s twelve-dot “night writing” and published it in 1829. The compact cell could fit beneath a fingertip.
Questions people ask
1Is ⢦ part of a picture rather than a word?
It can be. Braille characters are also used to build pictures out of text. In a larger dotted drawing, ⢦ may simply supply four dots rather than encode a letter.
More like this
8
How to type or find ⢦
- Search it as
- braille dots 2368 · eight-dot braille · computer braille
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⢦\28A6Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.