The language of moves

Six letters that describe every turn.

Cubers write moves with letters. Each face has one. F, for front. B, for back. U, for up. D, for down. L, for left. And R, for right. A letter on its own means one quarter turn clockwise, as if you were looking straight at that face. R. U. F.

A small mark after the letter, called prime, means counter-clockwise. R prime. U prime. A two means a half turn. F two. Here's a tip that saves a lot of confusion. For the left, down and back faces, clockwise still means as seen from that side. So L moves the front column down, not up.

Your turn to read. Do U, and then R prime.

Exactly right. You just followed written notation.

One more, a little longer. F, then U two, then L prime.

Great. If you can read that, you can read any algorithm.