Morse Code Translator

Translating to and from Morse

Morse code represents letters, digits, and a few punctuation marks as sequences of short signals (dots) and long signals (dashes). It was built for telegraph and radio, where you can only send on or off, and it is still used in aviation beacons and as an accessibility input method. Translation maps each character to its dot-dash pattern and back.

The timing is the hard part

Morse is defined by relative durations, not just symbols. A dash is three times the length of a dot. The gap between symbols within a letter is one dot. The gap between letters is three dots, and the gap between words is seven dots. Written Morse approximates these with spaces and a / for the word break, but the timing is what a listener actually decodes.

Example

SOS   -> ... --- ...
HELLO -> .... . .-.. .-.. ---
"HI THERE":
.... ..   /   - .... . .-. .

Note that SOS is a continuous distress signal, not three separate letters with normal gaps, which is why it is written without inter-letter spacing when keyed.

What it cannot carry

Standard Morse is case-insensitive, so it cannot distinguish uppercase from lowercase, and it covers only a limited punctuation set. Characters outside that set, like most symbols and any non-Latin script, have no representation and are dropped or flagged on encoding.

FAQ

Why did my decode lose the capitalization? Morse has no case. Decoded output is typically rendered uppercase by convention.

What does the slash mean? It marks a word boundary, standing in for the seven-dot gap between words.

Why did an emoji or accented letter disappear? There is no standard Morse mapping for it, so it cannot be encoded and is skipped.