Morse Code Alphabet

Reading the chart

Each character is a sequence of dots and dashes. A dot is one time unit, a dash is three, and the gaps matter as much as the symbols: one unit between symbols inside a letter, three between letters, seven between words. The shapes drawn next to each entry show the real proportion — a dash really is three times the length of a dot.

Why some letters are shorter than others

The alphabet is weighted by how often letters appear in English. E is one dot, T is one dash, and the four two-symbol combinations go to A, I, M and N. The letters you rarely need — Q, X, Y, Z — take four symbols each. Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail reportedly worked out the frequencies by counting the type in a printer’s tray, which is a remarkably practical way to arrive at what is essentially a hand-tuned compression scheme.

The numbers follow a pattern

Digits are the easiest part of the chart to memorise because they are perfectly regular. Every digit is five symbols. Counting up from 1, you replace one dash with a dot each time: 1 is .----, 2 is ..---, until 5 is ...... From 6 onwards it mirrors, replacing dots with dashes, until 0 is -----.

SOS and the prosigns

SOS — ...---... — is sent as one unbroken sequence, not as three separate letters. It was adopted in 1906 because that pattern is hard to mistake for anything else and easy to send by someone who is panicking. It does not stand for “save our souls” or anything else; the backronyms came later.

The other prosigns handle the choreography of a conversation: when a message starts, when it ends, when the contact is over, and — usefully — HH, eight dots in a row, meaning the last word was wrong and should be ignored.

Learning it properly

A chart is the worst way to learn Morse, and this is a chart, so consider this a warning about its own format. Reading dots and dashes builds a visual translation step that becomes a ceiling later: you will hear a letter, picture the symbols, then decode them. Operators learn by sound instead, usually with the Koch method — two characters at full speed until they are automatic, then a third, and so on.

Use the speaker button on each entry for that. Learn what A sounds like, not what it looks like.