What ⡴ means
It fills four positions in an eight-dot Braille cell. Viewed from the reading side, the left column is numbered 1, 2, 3, 7 from top to bottom; the right column is 4, 5, 6, 8. In ⡴, the bottom two positions on the left and the middle two on the right are filled.
Braille is writing read by touch through raised dots. The familiar six-dot cell has two columns of three positions; eight-dot Braille adds a bottom row. Dot 7 makes ⡴ an eight-dot pattern, so a six-dot alphabet chart cannot decode this exact character.
In written Braille, the applicable code determines how a pattern is read. In a text picture, its dots instead contribute to the image: you do not need to translate each cell into a letter.
Part of the collection
Worth knowing
- Louis Braille published his raised-dot writing system in 1829. His six-dot cell is the historical foundation; the extra bottom row belongs to eight-dot Braille.
Questions people ask
2Is ⡴ an emoji?
No. It is a text character whose appearance comes from the font. Its dots are parts of one character, not four separate punctuation marks.
Does displaying it on a screen make it readable by touch?
No. An ordinary screen shows the dots visually. Tactile reading requires raised output, such as embossed paper or a Braille display with movable pins.
More like this
9
How to type or find ⡴
- Search it as
- braille dots 3567 · braille symbol · eight-dot braille · Unicode braille
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⡴\2874Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.