Morse is a variable length code. Common letters get short symbols, rare ones get long symbols, which is why E is a single dot and Q is dash dash dot dash. It has no upper or lower case and no way to express most punctuation, so the encoding is lossy in one specific direction: case is discarded and unsupported characters have to be dropped or flagged.
The conversion runs in your browser with no network request, so a message stays on your machine whether it is a puzzle answer, a ham radio practice sentence or a tattoo you are checking before it becomes permanent.
What the International Morse code alphabet covers
The ITU recommendation defines symbols for the 26 basic Latin letters, the digits 0 to 9, and a short list of punctuation and procedural signs. Everything else, including accented letters, emoji and most symbols, has no standard representation.
This tool encodes the letters, the digits and the punctuation marks that the recommendation lists: full stop, comma, question mark, apostrophe, exclamation mark, slash, brackets, ampersand, colon, semicolon, equals, plus, hyphen, underscore, quotation mark, dollar and at. Anything outside that set is either skipped or marked, depending on the option you choose, and the count of skipped characters is reported so you never silently lose part of a message.
- Letters are case insensitive, so HELLO and hello produce identical morse.
- Digits always take five symbols, which is why numbers are slow to send.
- The at sign is the newest addition to the standard, adopted in 2004.
- Accented characters and emoji have no ITU representation and are reported as skipped.
Spacing rules that make morse readable
Timing carries as much meaning as the symbols. A dash lasts three times a dot, the gap between symbols inside a letter is one dot, the gap between letters is three dots and the gap between words is seven dots. Written morse mirrors that hierarchy with two levels of separator.
The convention used here is a single space between letters and a forward slash between words, which is what most puzzle sites, exam papers and practice software expect. If you are pasting into something with different expectations, both separators are configurable, so you can switch to a pipe, a double space or a line break per word without editing the output by hand.
Using this text to morse code converter for audio practice
Reading morse on a screen is a different skill from hearing it, and operators learn by ear. The play button generates the tones directly with the Web Audio API, using a sine oscillator gated by an envelope so each element starts and stops cleanly rather than clicking.
Speed is set in words per minute against the standard word PARIS, which is exactly 50 dot units long. At 20 words per minute a dot is 60 milliseconds. Learners are usually advised to keep character speed high and slow the gaps instead, so that the shape of each letter is learned as a single sound rather than as counted beats.
Where morse code is still used
Amateur radio keeps it alive as a mode that gets through when voice cannot, because a narrow continuous wave signal survives noise levels that would swamp speech. Aviation and marine navigation beacons still identify themselves in morse, which is why pilots verify a VOR station by listening to its three letter identifier.
It also survives as an accessibility input method, where a single switch can be used to enter text one element at a time, and as a puzzle convention in games, escape rooms and alternate reality campaigns. A morse code translator is usually the fastest way to check whether a sequence someone has written down is valid before you try to solve it.
Encoding options and what they do
Dot and dash characters are configurable because different contexts expect different glyphs. The ASCII full stop and hyphen are safest for code and forms. The Unicode middle dot and en quad style characters look better in print but break search and comparison, so avoid them if the output will be processed by another program.
The unsupported character option decides what happens to text morse cannot represent. Skip removes it silently and reports the count. Mark leaves a placeholder in place so you can see exactly where the loss happened, which matters when you convert text to morse code that includes names with accents.
| Element | Length in dot units |
|---|---|
| Dot | 1 |
| Dash | 3 |
| Gap inside a letter | 1 |
| Gap between letters | 3 |
| Gap between words | 7 |
How to convert text to morse code
- 1
Enter your message
Type or paste text into the box, or drop in a .txt file. Case is ignored because morse has none.
- 2
Choose the separators
Pick the characters for dot and dash, the gap between letters and the gap between words. The defaults match common practice.
- 3
Convert
Press convert. The morse appears with a count of encoded characters and a list of anything the standard cannot represent.
- 4
Play, copy or download
Play the message as tones at a chosen speed in words per minute, or copy the string and download it as a text file.
Related tools worth bookmarking
Sources and further reading
- ITU-R M.1677: International Morse codeThe recommendation that defines the official symbol set and the dot, dash and gap timing ratios.itu.int
- MDN: OscillatorNodeThe Web Audio interface used to generate the practice tones directly in the browser.developer.mozilla.org
- W3C: Web Audio APIThe specification behind the sample accurate scheduling that keeps morse element timing precise.w3.org
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about the text to morse code converter.
No. The International Morse code alphabet has a single symbol per letter with no case information at all, so uppercase and lowercase input produce identical output. Decoding morse back to text therefore always produces one case, conventionally uppercase, and the original capitalisation cannot be recovered.
The ITU recommendation only defines symbols for basic Latin letters, digits and a short list of punctuation. Accented letters, emoji, currency symbols other than the dollar and most mathematical signs have no agreed representation, so this tool reports them rather than inventing a code that no receiver would understand.
Most learners start with character speed around 18 to 20 words per minute and extra spacing between letters, an approach known as Farnsworth timing. It teaches each letter as a rhythm rather than a sequence of counted beats, which avoids the plateau that comes from learning slowly and then trying to speed up.
No. The lookup table is bundled with the page and the encoding runs in JavaScript in your tab. Audio is generated locally by the Web Audio API. You can check with the network panel of your browser developer tools while converting and playing a message.
Yes, using the morse code to text converter linked below. Round tripping returns the letters, digits and supported punctuation exactly, but the result is uppercase and any characters skipped during encoding are gone for good.