Morse Code Alphabet

Common questions

How many characters does Morse code have?

This alphabet has 54 characters in it: the 26 letters A to Z, the 10 digits 0 to 9, and 18 punctuation marks, all of them in the table below. Accented letters fold to their base letter, so E acute is sent as E, and anything with no equivalent at all is listed under the translation rather than quietly dropped.

How do you say Morse code out loud?

Dashes are said dah and dots are said di, except the last dot of a character, which is dit because it is the one that stops. So A is di-dah, B is dah-di-di-dit and S is di-di-dit. The Said aloud column is worked out from each character's dots and dashes by that rule, not typed in, which is why it always matches the column beside it.

How long is a dash compared with a dot?

Three times as long. A dot is one unit, a dash is three, the gap inside a character is one unit, the gap between characters is three and the gap between words is seven. The Play as sound button uses exactly those proportions, and the speed setting sets the length of one unit: at 20 words a minute a dot is 0.06 seconds.

How are letters and words separated in writing?

One space between characters and a slash between words, which is the convention this page and the translator both use: HELLO WORLD comes out as .... . .-.. .-.. --- / .-- --- .-. .-.. -.. with a slash where the space was. When you paste Morse in, three or more spaces are read as a word break too, and a vertical bar is accepted for the slash.

Why do some charts show different punctuation?

Because punctuation is where the national variants live. The set here is the one in the international recommendation, which is what Morse operators and puzzle setters mean by Morse code. Symbols outside it, the euro sign for instance, have no agreed code, so the translator reports them instead of inventing one.