Morse Code Converter

Every character this converter handles, with the code it sends. Letters and digits are the international standard set from ITU-R M.1677-1. The accented letters are additions used across continental Europe rather than part of that standard.

Morse is not really dots and dashes. It is one tone switched on and off, and every length in it is a multiple of a single base unit. A dot is one unit of tone. A dash is three. The silence inside a letter is one unit, between letters three, and between words seven.

Speed is quoted in words per minute against the word PARIS, which is exactly 50 units long including its trailing word gap. That fixes the arithmetic: a unit lasts 1200/WPM milliseconds, so 20 WPM gives a 60 ms dot and a 180 ms dash. The Play button above uses those exact figures, which is why a message sounds right rather than just sounding like beeping.

Get the gaps wrong and you send a different message. ...---... sent as one unbroken run is the distress signal SOS. Sent with proper three-unit letter gaps it is the three separate letters S, O and S, which is not a distress call.

Procedural signals are run together with no letter gap, so they act as single characters rather than as the letters they are written from.

Text to Morse writes one space between letters and a slash between words, which is the usual plain-text convention: .... .. / - .... . .-. . is HI THERE.

Morse to text is looser about what it accepts, because pasted Morse rarely follows one convention. Words may be divided by a slash, a vertical bar, or three or more spaces. Dots may be written as periods or middle dots, dashes as hyphens, underscores or en dashes. Anything it cannot match comes back as a question mark, which usually means a missing letter gap rather than a wrong character.