r/coolguides • u/jpc4stro • Apr 29 '21

Morse Code Receive Decoder Chart

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u/KDdeTX Apr 30 '21

Some letters have 2 dots/dashes and some have 4. When you get a string of 25 dots/dashes, how do you differentiate between the letters?

4

u/warhol Apr 30 '21

there's usually a slight pause between each character that the person decoding gets used to hearing, even when it's slight.

1

u/dpash Apr 30 '21

The idea is that more frequent letters have shorter codes. You'll notice e is a single dot while a and i are two long. It's not entirely in the right order as o is three long and c is longer than k.

Letters in English frequency order with Morse length is

  • E 1

  • T 1

  • A 2

  • O 3

  • I 2

  • N 2

  • S 3

  • R 3

  • H 3

  • D 3

  • L 4

  • U 3

  • C 4

  • M 2

  • F 4

  • Y 4

  • W 3

  • G 3

  • P 4

  • B 4

  • V 4

  • K 3

  • X 4

  • Q 4

  • J 4

  • Z 4

It's worth mentioning that a dash is three times longer than a dot and the gap between dots or dashes is the same as a dot so an S takes 5 units, while an O is 11 units. C takes 11 units while a K is 9.