Morse Code Alphabet

The Morse code alphabet gives each of the 26 letters its own sequence of dots and dashes, from E's single dot to patterns four elements long. The full table is below: click any letter for its timing, an easy mnemonic, and how to tap or flash it, or press play to hear it at 20 words per minute.

Two signals build everything. A dot is one short beat; a dash is held exactly three times as long. Inside a letter, the elements are separated by one beat of silence, and between letters the silence stretches to three beats. That timing is the whole system. If you can keep a steady rhythm, you can send every letter on this page with a flashlight, a buzzer, or a fingertip.

The lengths aren't random. When Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail laid out the code in the 1830s and 40s, they gave the shortest signals to the most common English letters, reportedly after counting the type in a printer's cases. That's why E is a single dot and T a single dash, while rare letters like J and Q carry three dashes each. The result reads almost like a frequency chart of English: the more often a letter appears, the faster it sends.

The "sound" column writes each code the way operators actually learn it: dots are "di" (or "dit" at the end), dashes are "DAH". Experienced operators never count dots and dashes; they recognize each letter's rhythm as a single shape, the way you hear a word rather than its letters. Saying the spoken forms aloud as you read the table is the fastest way to start building that reflex.

This page covers the letters. Digits have their own five-element logic on the numbers page, punctuation and prosigns live on the punctuation page, and if you want the whole system on one printable sheet, the Morse code chart has PDF and PNG downloads. To convert whole words as you learn, use the translator.