Letter 17 of 26
The letter Q in braille
Q is dots 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Dots 1-2-3-4-5
Unicode ⠟ — U+281F
How to recognise it
Dots 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 — five of the six dots raised, everything except dot 6. It is one of the fullest cells and rare enough in English that most readers identify it by density alone.
How this cell is built
Q belongs to decade 2. It is the letter g with dot 3 added — the same transformation applied to every letter in this decade.
Easily confused with
These letters differ from Q by a single dot, which is where reading errors actually happen. Drill them against each other rather than in alphabetical order.
Practice words
Each word below starts with Q, written in Grade 1 so every letter has its own cell.
quiz
quiet
queen
Standing alone, Q means “quite”. Inside a longer word it is just the letter q. See the contraction reference for the full list.