Morse Code Alphabet

Every letter is built from just two signals: a dot, which is one time unit long, and a dash, which is three. Inside a letter the parts are separated by one unit of silence. Between two letters there are three units, and between two words there are seven.

That is the whole system. Because the difference between a dot and a dash is a ratio rather than a fixed number of milliseconds, the alphabet sounds correct whether it is sent at 5 or 40 words per minute.

The table on this page is International Morse code, standardised in 1865 and now defined by the International Telecommunication Union. An older variant, American Morse, used internal gaps inside some letters and is no longer in general use. If you see a chart where L is a long dash rather than .-.., you are looking at the old version.

In writing, a space separates the letters and a slash marks a word break, so HELLO is .... . .-.. .-.. ---. You can check any word this way with the Morse code translator.

A few things that work better than staring at a printed chart:

• Learn sounds, not shapes. Play a letter and remember the rhythm (di-dah for A). People who memorise the written dots first usually have to unlearn it later.
• Start with the short ones. E, T, A, N, I and M take seconds to learn and already cover a large share of ordinary English text.
• Use pairs that contrast. Practise A (.-) against N (-.), and S (...) against O (---). Hearing the difference matters more than knowing each one alone.
• Keep the character speed up. Leaving longer gaps between letters is better than slowing the letters themselves down, because it trains you to hear each letter as one sound.
• Practise in short sessions. Ten focused minutes a day beats an hour once a week.

Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail counted the letters in a printer's type case to find out which ones English uses most, and gave those the shortest codes. That is why the most common letters are the quickest to send:

• E — . — the most frequent letter in English, and a single dot
• T — - — a single dash
• A — .-
• N — -.
• I — ..
• S — ...
• O — ---

Rare letters pay the price: Q is --.- and Y is -.--, four signals each. The pay-off is that ordinary sentences take noticeably less time to send than they would if every letter were the same length. S and O also give us the best known sequence of all, ... --- ....