Context: The Unified Modeling Language (UML) has become the standard for modeling software. Several surveys on the UML usage have been proposed in recent years. However, there is still a lack of understanding regarding practices and perceptions of UML use from the perspective of practitioners in the Brazilian industry. Objective: This paper reports on a survey focused on identifying the state-of-the-practice of the Brazilian industry for what concerns the UML usage in real-world settings. Method: In total, 222 practitioners from 140 different Information Technology companies have answered an on-line (or printed) questionnaire concerning their UML use experiences, the difficulty in adopting UML and what should be done to increase the UML adoption in practice. Result: The results show that:(1) 60 participants (28.2%) have used UML in their daily work, while 73.2% have not;(2) 55.41% of the surveyed participants did not disagree with the statement that UML is the “lingua franca” in software modeling;(3) 61.26% reported to find that the automatic creation of UML diagrams to represent a big picture of the system under development would be useful to boost UML use. Conclusion: The UML is not often used in the work life of participants. In addition, no relationship was identified between the use of UML and the participant company being a software factory.