Talk:Morse code

Semi-protected edit request on 1 June 2024

In the part 'speed in words per minute', they state that the speed for a dit might be 50 milliseconds. I don't know how long it would realistically be, but 1/200th of a second seems really short. It would mean that you could type 100 e's in one second, which seems a lot to me. 2A02:1810:4F27:3A00:5476:75CA:86EB:1B2C (talk) 21:04, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

50ms is 1/20th of a second. Hyphenation Expert (talk) 22:28, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

50 ms "dits" is 24 WPM Morse code, fast but not exceedingly so--it's a professional speed and code faster than that is heard on the amateur bands now. The FCC exam for the First Class Radiotelegraph license required 25 WPM. Dkazdan (talk) 23:13, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

inverted question mark missing from table

The inverted question mark ¿ is missing from the table; it has encoding ..-.- according to the tree diagram. But I don't care to fix it. Jurjen B (talk) 13:50, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I meant: I don't _dare_ to fix it. Jurjen B (talk) 13:51, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

It is also the prosign for "please repeat" Jurjen B (talk) 13:53, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I was wrong about the code: it is ..--.-

A dash got lost somewhere Jurjen B (talk) 13:57, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Missing AR Prosign

The AR (EOM - End of Message) is missing from the Morse code table 181.105.151.204 (talk) 18:57, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

"In addition, applications are now available for mobile phones that enable short messages to be input in Morse Code"

This line doesn't make sense, the citation just talks about Nokia patenting the ability to do that. Source? Dany0 (talk) 17:18, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

and even if true, it's WP:TRIVIA so I will delete. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:13, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

and would be contrary to WP:NOTDB if I could find it? So I haven't deleted it but I have deleted Some Nokia mobile phones offer an option to alert the user of an incoming text message with the Morse tone " ▄ ▄ ▄  ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄  ▄ ▄ ▄ ", which is just as trivial. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:40, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Accented letters

I want to talk about the "Accented Letters" that are in this article, as it's all a bit of an unsourced mess.

To give some background, the very first ITU standard for Morse code (from 1865) contained the accented letters É, Å, Ä, Ö, Ü, Ñ, and the digraph CH. You can see them on pages 48-49 of this pdf file: https://search.itu.int/history/HistoryDigitalCollectionDocLibrary/4.1.43.fr.200.pdf. That document is available from the ITU website (http://handle.itu.int/11.1004/020.1000/4.1).

By 1938 (https://search.itu.int/history/HistoryDigitalCollectionDocLibrary/1.35.48.en.100.pdf, p39-41), À has been added (with the same code as Å), and all of the accented letters and digraphs are described as "optional" except for É. Later, the ITU dropped support for all of the optional letters/digraphs, as the most recent ITU standards only contain É.

Apart from the above letters (and perhaps the Esperanto letters), I don't think there was any sort of international convention when it came to accented letters. I suspect it varied from country to country, and there were probably multiple incompatible conventions. The most common convention was probably to omit accents altogether, although that probably wasn't an equally acceptable solution for all languages.

By putting non-ITU accented letters into a single table in this article, we're probably implying a level of standardization and uniformity that didn't exist. I'm tempted to remove them, particularly as they're unsourced.

I also don't think we can hope to include every possible Latin alphabet in this table (unless it gets much bigger). For example, there was also a Vietnamese Morse code (according to the Vietnamese alphabet article). Should we include that?

Apart from the ITU letters, the letters in this article seem to fall into five categories: Esperanto, Polish, Icelandic, French, Danish/Norwegian, and Other. I'll discuss each of them below.

ESPERANTO

The letters Ĉ, Ĝ, Ĥ, Ĵ, Ŝ, Ŭ come from Esperanto, the "international" language invented by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887. Esperanto had its heyday around the same time that Morse Code had its heyday, so I expect these letters actually were in use, and they probably were quite standardized due to fact that there was a central organization overseeing the language.

However, are these letters notable enough to be in this article? The Morse Code codes for these letters are already adequately covered in the Esperanto alphabet article, so I think a simple "See Also:" might be enough.

POLISH

The letters Ą, Ć, Ę, Ł, Ń, Ó, Ś, Ź, and Ż come from Polish. As has been noted before, the encoding of Ź and Ż in this English article are the reverse of what they are in the Polish version of this article. Both are unsourced, so I have no way of knowing which is right, and I'm tempted to remove them. I think we should put in a "See Also:" and let the Poles figure it out.

ICELANDIC

This article contains the letters Ð (Eth), Þ (Thorn), and Æ, which come from Icelandic. (Æ is also in other alphabets, like Danish and Norwegian.) The letter Þ is notable for the fact that it is not derived from any Latin letter, so you cannot simply "drop the accent". That is, it requires a distinct representation in Morse Code. Although Eth derives from D, it is considered a distinct letter in Icelandic as the voiced counterpart of Thorn, and thus also demands a distinct representation.

The Icelandic version of this article gives codes for all of the Icelandic letters: Á, Ð (eth), É, Í, Ó, Ú, Þ (thorn), Æ, and Ö. The code for É matches the ITU code for É. Curiously, the Icelandic article gives the same code for O, Ó, and Ö, and the code for Ö does not match the ITU code for Ö, and I wonder if that is an error. (The article is unsourced.)

This raises a question. If we include Ð, Þ, and Æ in this article, shouldn't we also include Á, Í, Ó, and Ú? Or are Á, Í, Ó, and Ú omitable while Ð, Þ, and Æ aren't? And if we do include them, does it become a problem that the code for Ó in Icelandic is different from the code for Ó in Polish?

FRENCH

The letters Ç and È are from French. (The French letters É and À are already ITU letters.) As someone who speaks French myself, I can see why Ç and È would be desirable letters to have, but I can also testify that French is quite legible without them, and I'm skeptical that they were ever widely used in Morse. One of the references cited in the article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code#cite_note-dik-archive-81) gives a code for Ç that is different from the one in this article, which increases my skepticism.

DANISH/NORWEGIAN

The letters Æ, Ø, and Å are from the Danish and Norwegian alphabet. The code for Å is from ITU, while Æ and Ø apparently reuse the ITU codes for Ä and Ö. Not much to say about them except that they're unsourced.

OTHER (Š and Đ)

This article also gives codes for Š and Đ (D with a stroke, not Eth). I'm not even sure what languages these are supposed to be for.

Š could be for Czech, or Serbian, or Sami, but in each case, it's weird that there's no corresponding code for Ž, which is also a letter in all those alphabets.

Đ could be for Czech or Serbian, but again, coverage for those languages would still be incomplete. The code given here for Đ is also not the same as the code for Đ in Vietnamese, according to the the article on the Vietnamese alphabet. It's also weird that the code for Đ in this article conflicts with the ITU code for É, since É is not an "optional" letter in the standard. And all of this is unsourced.

So, yeah. I'm tempted to remove all the non-ITU codes from the table, and just have a short word about "National variants", with maybe some links to articles about the other alphabets.

阮阿蘭 (talk) 00:06, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Support as this all makes sense to me. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:26, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

It turns out that I can't edit the article because it is semi-protected and my account is too new. 阮阿蘭 (talk) 19:35, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

I hate to ask for this, but could you write a condensed list of what specific changes you would like to make? Change X to Y, etc. Remsense ‥ 论 19:51, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Fifteen wrong links to Digraph (orthography)

There are currently fifteen links to the article Digraph (orthography). They are not only a grave case of overlinking, but are even all wrong: That  ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄  has nothing to do with the concept of a digraph in orthography can be seen if one only looks at the lede of that article. Neither is  ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄  by itself a pair of characters (It lends itself to be divided in many combinations other than KW, such as CM or even TETETT.), nor does it code a phoneme, nor a sequence of phonemes. The root "graph" fits to the definition of Morse code as a “sequence of signal durations” like a square peg in a round hole. Above all, it's unsourced: The sources in the vicinity of that term are not meant for the term, and those that I checked don't even contain the very word. To top it all off, the word occurs most often under the headline “Character”, suggesting that such constructs as KW are anything like a character, when in fact they aren't even anything that the code is meant to express. I therefore think they should be removed. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 23:29, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Period in Morse code

Okay, a periodic in Morse code is “.-.-.-“. Could someone edit this? I just don’t have the file, or format. If it is already on the list, that’s okay. Ben Avital BenAvital100 (talk) 12:24, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

Already there, at Letters, numbers, punctuation, prosigns for Morse code and non-Latin variants 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:17, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

Clarify “half-beat”, or reword

para 2:

The dit duration can vary for signal clarity and operator skill, but for any one message, once the rhythm is established, a half-beat is the basic unit of time measurement in Morse code.

Is this trying to say that the dit is the basic unit of time measurement in Morse code? The rest of the para refers to every other feature in units of dits, and the term half-beat is not used or defined anywhere else. ITU-R M.1677-1 section 2 defines all features in terms of dits (or in their parlance, "dots"). scruss (talk) 00:01, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

Proposal: Include new Morse Code memorization method (Mirror/Opposite Pairs)

To the editors:

I recently attempted to add a quick memorization system to the article, which was reverted by JMF due to a lack of a WP:Reliable Source (RS) and WP:No Original Research (NOR) violation. I understand and respect these core policies.

I am proposing the inclusion of this method on the basis of its pedagogical utility and simplicity. The system groups the alphabet into three categories: mirror pairs (e.g., A .- vs. N -.), opposite pairs (e.g., E . vs. T -), and standalone letters.

Request for Consensus (WP:Consensus):

As the method is newly created, it currently lacks a third-party RS. However, given that it is a simple mnemonic technique that relies only on the structural properties of the existing International Morse Code table, I believe it meets the spirit of WP:NOTABLE for inclusion as a practical aid to the reader.

I ask the community for consensus on whether this technique should be included in the "Memorization" or "Learning" section, provided it is explicitly attributed as a recently developed mnemonic system.

The method is detailed in this diagram: [[File:QuickWayMemorizeMorseCode WG.png]]

Please share your thoughts. Thank you for your time.

[[User:Williamgalindo1972|Williamgalindo1972]] Williamgalindo1972 (talk) 16:53, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

Disabling markup

Is there a convincing reason for this article to use the bold+smallcaps markup? ('''{{sc| etc ) This practice makes the text needlessly difficult to read and thus contrary to MOS:ACCESS (and MOS:BOLD). The doc page for {{sc}} states very clearly:

This template should be avoided or used sparingly in articles, as the Manual of Style advises that small caps should be avoided and reduced to one of the other title cases or normal case, and that markup should be kept simple.

and the MOS page MOS:ALLCAPS spells it out in full.

I appreciate that Morse code doesn't support lower case and nobody wants a lot of SHOUTING, so may I suggest some alternatives:

• To isolate an individual letter for analysis, use the linguistics markup {{angbr}}, as used widely elsewhere in Wikipedia. (e.g., ⟨A⟩, ⟨B⟩, ⟨C⟩
  • to isolate small characters like apostrophe, {{code}} or {{char}} may be easier to read: ', ' .
• for phrases like WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT, use {{resize}}, which is a tolerable 10% reduction (thus WHAT GOD HATH WROUGHT rather than WHAT GOD HATH WROUGHT
  • in a few cases, it may be appropriate to use {{allcaps}} too (though it may be quicker to retype!). Thus What God hath wrought becomes What God hath wrought), by using {{midsize|{{allcaps|What God hath wrought}}}}).
• {{code}} should be used to handle snippets like "4%" would be sent as "4-0/0", thus "4%" would be sent as 4-0/0, not "4%" would be sent as 4-0/0.

Does anyone want to defend the current markup? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:20, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

I have revised the lead per this proposal, so that effect can be seen. If anyone has any concerns, please let me know asap. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:56, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

The bold should definitely go, but what do we actually gain by manually synthesising fake small caps instead of requesting browser to use appropriately designed font variant if available? Manual of Style advises against changing font size as well. How is resize/midsize any better MOS- and accessibility-wise than plain {{sc2}} would be? I think if we still really want that look, simple WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT, KW would be typographically better. I have no opinion about other options, but I think we shouldn't introduce multiple ways to mark the same type within one article: if it's ⟨A⟩ then I would expect ⟨'⟩ and ⟨4%⟩. – MwGamera (talk) 23:47, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

As it stands, {{sc}} produces caps text that has the same x-height as "normal" lowercase text. If that is a acceptable, then the task will be a lot easier. But I assumed (incorrectly?) that bold is being used to 'isolate' the Morse input/output (in preference to italic, as specified by MOS:WAW) and having the caps a bit larger would be needed to provide an equivalent identification. Simply removing the bold mark-up will resolve my concern.

Isolating single letters using angle brackets is a linguistics convention. To my eye, it is "nicer" than italics but that may be familiarity. I used it to replace a "bold + sc" mark-up that really did not look right in that context. Other options are {{code}}, {{char}} and italic (monospaced v normal in a box, A v A v A) . 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 09:27, 9 January 2026 (UTC)