Braille pattern dots 2 and 7

27 means dots 2 and 7, not twenty-seven dots. An eight-dot cell has two columns of four positions. Read from top to bottom, the left column is numbered 1, 2, 3, 7; the right is 4, 5, 6, 8. In ⡂, only positions 2 and 7 are raised.

Braille lets blind readers read by touch. On a screen, this character is a visual representation of the cell. Unicode preserves the pattern; the Braille code used for a language or purpose assigns its reading.

Why does it have a seventh dot?

Eight-dot Braille extends the original six-dot cell. Louis Braille developed his six-dot system from Charles Barbier’s raised-dot writing and published it in 1829. Six-dot cells have three rows; eight-dot cells add a fourth row, with dot 7 on the left and dot 8 on the right.

The extra positions provide more patterns for representing computer text. That makes ⡂ an eight-dot pattern even though only two of its positions are filled.