Morse code translator and timing calculator

Morse code writes letters as short and long signals. This page translates both ways using the international table, and, unlike most translators, it also tells you how long the message takes to send, which is what a radio operator, a trainer or an exam candidate actually needs to know. Everything runs in your browser.

How do I translate text to Morse code?

Type your text into the text-to-Morse tab and press Calculate. Each letter, digit or supported punctuation mark becomes a group of dots and dashes, groups are separated by a space and words by a slash. HELLO WORLD comes out as .... . .-.. .-.. --- / .-- --- .-. .-.. -... The table is the one in Recommendation ITU-R M.1677-1, so characters it does not define (such as ! & ; $ or _) are skipped and listed under the result instead of being guessed.

How do I decode Morse code to text?

Switch to the Morse-to-text tab and type dots (.) and dashes (-). Put one space between letters and a slash (/) or three spaces between words. The bullet • and the en dash – are accepted too, which helps when you paste text from a document. A group that is not in the table is shown as # in the result and listed below it, which usually means a missed or extra dot, or a missing space between two letters.

How long is a dot, a dash and a pause?

ITU-R M.1677-1 fixes the proportions: a dash is three dots, the space between the signals of one letter is one dot, the space between letters is three dots and the space between words is seven dots. The absolute length depends on your speed: at 15 words per minute one dot lasts 80 ms, a dash 240 ms and a word space 560 ms. The calculator prints these numbers for the speed you enter.

What does words per minute mean in Morse code?

Because words differ in length, Morse speed is measured with a standard word, PARIS. Sent with the ITU proportions it occupies exactly 50 units including the space after it, so one word per minute means 50 units per minute and a dot of 1200 ÷ WPM milliseconds. This is why 20 WPM gives a 60 ms dot while 5 WPM, the traditional beginner speed, gives 240 ms. Real text rarely has the average length of PARIS, so the calculator also counts the units of your actual message and gives its own transmit time.

How is the transmit time of a message calculated?

Add the units of every dot (1), dash (3), gap inside a letter (1), gap between letters (3) and gap between words (7), then multiply by the dot length. For HELLO WORLD that is 111 units, which is 8.88 seconds at 15 WPM. No gap is added after the last character, because nothing follows it.

Which punctuation marks does International Morse code have?

The ITU table covers the full stop, comma, colon, question mark, apostrophe, hyphen, fraction bar (slash), left and right parentheses, quotation marks, the double hyphen (=), the cross or addition sign (+) and the commercial at (@), in addition to the 26 letters and ten digits. It also lists procedural signals such as the error signal (eight dots) and the end-of-work signal; the calculator does not translate those, because they are sent as signals rather than typed as text. Accented letters other than é are not in the table either.

Does this page play sound?

No. It works out the code and the timing table only; nothing is played, and nothing is sent anywhere. If you want to practice, tap the timing out loud with the dot lengths shown or use the character-by-character table to count units. The result stays on your device, like everything else on this site.

Is Morse code still used?

The ITU recommendation notes that the code has been in use since 1844 and continues to be used in some radiocommunication services, including amateur and amateur-satellite radio, and to a diminishing extent in the mobile and fixed services.

How the timing works

Everything in Morse is measured in units, where one unit is the length of a dot. A dot is 1 unit, a dash is 3 units. Between the dots and dashes of one letter there is a 1-unit silence, between letters 3 units and between words 7 units. These are rules 2.1 to 2.4 of Part I of Recommendation ITU-R M.1677-1. The letter H (....) is four dots and three silences, so it takes 7 units; the letter E (.) takes 1.

The speed is fixed by naming how many times the word PARIS fits into a minute. PARIS is P (11 units), A (5), R (7), I (3) and S (5), plus 3 units between each pair of letters (12 units) and 7 units of space before the next word, which adds up to 50. At 1 word per minute the dot is therefore 1200 ms, and at W words per minute it is 1200 ÷ W milliseconds. Common reference points: 240 ms at 5 WPM, 100 ms at 12 WPM, 60 ms at 20 WPM and 48 ms at 25 WPM.

Worked example

Take HELLO WORLD. In code it is .... . .-.. .-.. --- / .-- --- .-. .-.. -... Adding up the letters gives the units inside the letters, then 8 letter gaps of 3 units and 1 word gap of 7 units. The total is 111 units. At 15 WPM one dot lasts 1200 ÷ 15 = 80 ms, so the message takes 111 × 80 ms = 8.88 seconds. For comparison, the distress group SOS (three letters, no word gap) takes 27 units, which is 2.16 seconds at the same speed.

Common mistakes and limits of this tool

• Mixing up letter and word gaps. In written Morse a single space separates letters and a slash separates words. Writing a whole sentence with single spaces only gives a string that decodes as one very long word, because the 7-unit word gap is what separates words on the air.
• Assuming every symbol has a code. Recommendation ITU-R M.1677-1 contains no code for ! & ; $ or _. They are not part of the international standard, so this page skips them instead of making up a code. The ITU text also says how to send signs that have no signal: the multiplication sign is sent as the letter X, and a percent sign is sent as 0/0.
• Treating the time as a goal for beginners. The word PARIS is an average. Texts with many E and T send faster than texts with Q, J and digits, so the actual time can be well away from the figure computed from words alone. This is why the page counts your real message.
• Expecting audio or Farnsworth timing. Some trainers send characters at a high speed but stretch the gaps; this page uses the plain ITU proportions only, with no sound.
• Procedural signals. Signals such as the error signal (eight dots), the wait signal and the end-of-work signal are listed in the ITU table, but they are operating signals, not text, and are not produced by the translator.

A short history

The ITU recommendation states that versions of the Morse code have been in use since 1844. The international form on this page is the one confirmed by the ITU for radiocommunication services; the document dates from 2004 and was revised in October 2009 (M.1677-1). It also records conventions that matter in practice, such as sending a figure and letter group without spaces, writing ordinal numbers as 25TH, and linking a fraction to a whole number with a hyphen.

Sources: ITU-R Recommendation M.1677-1 (10/2009) “International Morse code”, Annex 1, Part I, sections 1.1 (characters), 2 (spacing and length) and 3 (signs without a Morse signal); the PARIS standard of 50 units is described in the Wikipedia article “Morse code” and was checked by counting the units of PARIS with the same rules. Related: binary converter, base converter, Caesar cipher, typing speed calculator and word counter.