How are letters and words separated?

A single space separates letters and a forward slash separates words. Without those separators Morse is ambiguous — the same run of dots and dashes can decode several ways.

Why is E a single dot?

Because Morse assigned the shortest sequences to the most frequent letters in English. E is the commonest letter, so it gets one dot; Q and Z are rare and get four symbols each.

Is punctuation supported?

Letters, digits and the word separator are covered. Standard Morse does define sequences for punctuation, but they are rarely used and are not included here — unrecognised input decodes to a question mark.

Encode & Decode

Morse Code Translator

Converts between plain text and Morse code in both directions. Morse encodes each letter as a sequence of dots and dashes — E, the most common letter in English, is a single dot, while less frequent letters get longer sequences. That frequency-based design made transmission efficient long before data compression existed.

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Input

Direction

Result

... --- ...

About

What the Morse Code Translator does

In this notation, letters are separated by spaces and words by a forward slash. The most recognised sequence is SOS — three dots, three dashes, three dots — chosen not as an abbreviation but because the pattern is distinctive and hard to mistake.

How it works

Using the Morse Code Translator

1Enter text or Morse code.
2Choose the direction of translation.
3Encoding maps each letter and digit to its dot-dash sequence, separated by spaces.
4Words are separated by a forward slash.
5Decoding reverses the mapping, with unrecognised sequences marked with a question mark.

Use cases

What people use it for

Decoding a Morse sequence from a puzzle or game
Creating a Morse message for a scout or amateur radio activity
Learning the code by checking your own translations
Adding a Morse element to a design or prop

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

6 related

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