A braid is an intertwining of some number of strings attached to top and bottom "bars" such that each string never "turns back up."
In other words, the path of each string in a braid could be traced out by a falling
object if acted upon only by gravity and horizontal forces. A given braid may be
assigned a symbol known as a braid word that uniquely identifies it (although equivalent
braids may have more than one possible representations). In particular, an 
-braid can constructed by iteratively applying the 
(
) operator, which switches the lower endpoints of
the 
th and 
th strings--keeping the upper endpoints fixed--with the
th string brought above the 
th string. If the 
th string passes below the 
th string, it is denoted 
.
An ordered combination of the 
and 
symbols constitutes a braid word. For example, 
is a braid word for the braid illustrated above, where
the symbols can be read off the diagram left to right and then top to bottom.
By Alexander's theorem, any link is representable by a closed braid, but there is no general procedure for reducing a braid word to its simplest form. However, Markov's theorem gives a procedure for identifying different braid words which represent the same link.
The following table lists (not necessarily unique) braid words for some common knots and links.
| link | braid word |
| Borromean rings |  |
| figure eight knot |  |
| Hopf link |  |
| Miller Institute knot |  |
| Solomon's seal knot |  |
| stevedore's knot |  |
| trefoil knot |  |
| Whitehead link |  |
Let 
be the sum of positive
exponents, and 
the sum of negative exponents in the braid
group 
.
If
 |
then the closed braid 
is not amphichiral (Jones 1985).
