Text to Morse Code

Type a message and the tool replaces each letter, number, or punctuation mark with its Morse equivalent: dot (.) for short signal, dash (-) for long signal. SOS becomes '... --- ...'. HELLO becomes '.... . .-.. .-.. ---'. Spaces between letters use a single space; spaces between words use a forward slash. The mapping follows the International Morse Code standard adopted in 1865 and still used in amateur radio and aviation today.

The full set covers A through Z, 0 through 9, and 13 punctuation marks (full stop, comma, question mark, apostrophe, exclamation, slash, parentheses, ampersand, colon, semicolon, equals, plus, hyphen, underscore, quotation marks, dollar sign, at sign). Letters most common in English have the shortest codes - E is one dot, T is one dash - while rare letters like Q (--.-) and J (.---) get longer sequences. This is not a coincidence; Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail designed the codebook by counting letter frequencies in a printer's type case and assigning short codes to common letters.

Mostly amateur radio (ham radio) operators, who still pass licensing exams that include Morse comprehension in some countries. Aviation beacons broadcast their two- or three-letter station identifiers in Morse so pilots can confirm they are tuned to the right transmitter. Submarines used Morse for emergency communications well into the 2000s. Rarely, the military still uses it for low-bandwidth covert signalling. Outside those niches, Morse is more cultural than practical.

The most common everyday use today is novelty: tapping out 'I love you' (.. / .-.. --- ...- . / -.-- --- ..-) on someone's hand, hidden Morse messages in birthday cards or escape rooms, and accessibility devices that translate eye-blinks or single-button presses into text via Morse. The Apple Watch and various assistive technologies still use Morse input as an option for people with limited motor control.

If you can recognise the patterns for SOS (... --- ...), CQ ('Calling Anyone' -.-. --.-), and your own initials, you can spot Morse in the wild. The classic learning trick is to memorise five-letter groups: ETIANM (one to five characters of E's pattern, building up), or ETARSL (the most common letters). Once you know those, the rest of the alphabet falls into place because the patterns build logically from the short codes outward.

For decoding back to plain text, this tool only goes one way (text to Morse). To go the other way, paste the Morse into your favourite Morse decoder, or use a fixed reference table. Morse is more concise than English (about 4 characters of Morse per English letter on average), but reading it visually takes practice. The [text to binary](/text-to-binary) tool is a better choice if you want a similar 'encoded text' look that decodes more easily by eye.