Text-to-Morse conversion is not complicated, but it does have rules. Miss the spacing rules and your output becomes a string of dots and dashes that nobody can decode. Get them right and you have a valid Morse message. This article explains the process from start to finish, so you understand what is happening when you type something into a morse code translator and a string of dots and dashes comes back.
Step 1: Capitalize everything (then ignore case)
Morse code has no concept of upper or lowercase. There is one code for each letter, and it applies to both. When encoding, the first step is to treat all letters the same. The word "Hello" and the word "HELLO" will produce identical Morse output. That is not a limitation; it is just how the code works. Radio operators in the 1900s were not worried about capitalization.
Step 2: Look up each character
Every letter, digit, and supported punctuation mark maps to a specific sequence of dots and dashes. The full table is on the Morse code alphabet reference page. Here are the letters you need for the most common worked example:
| Letter | Morse Code |
|---|---|
| H | .... |
| E | . |
| L | .-.. |
| L | .-.. |
| O | --- |
HELLO, letter by letter: H is four dots, E is one dot, L is dot-dash-dot-dot, L again the same, O is three dashes. Five characters, five lookups.
Step 3: Apply the spacing rules
This is where most people trip up. Dots and dashes within a single character run together with no gap. Between characters (letters or digits) in the same word, you put a single space. Between words, you put a forward slash with a space on each side, or simply a longer gap. The ITU standard defines the exact pause lengths in audio Morse: a dot is one unit, a dash is three units, the gap between elements in a character is one unit, the gap between characters is three units, and the gap between words is seven units. In written Morse, the space-and-slash convention captures the same idea.
So HELLO becomes:
.... . .-.. .-.. ---
Each group of dots and dashes is one letter. The spaces between them are the inter-letter gaps. If there were a second word, say HELLO WORLD, you would separate the two words with a slash:
.... . .-.. .-.. --- / .-- --- .-. .-.. -..
More worked examples
SOS
SOS is the most famous Morse sequence: ... --- .... S is three dots, O is three dashes, S again three dots. In a real distress transmission, SOS is sent as one continuous group without the normal inter-letter spacing, which makes it stand out from ordinary text. Written out with standard spacing it looks like three separate letters, but transmitted it sounds like one unmistakable pattern.
CQ (calling all stations)
CQ is what radio operators send when they want to make contact with anyone listening. C is -.-. and Q is --.-, so CQ is -.-. --.-. It is a classic and still used on amateur radio bands today.
A short sentence
Take the phrase "GO NOW". G is --., O is ---, so GO is --. ---. N is -., O is ---, W is .--, so NOW is -. --- .--. The full phrase:
--. --- / -. --- .--
The slash with spaces around it separates the two words.
Encoding digits and punctuation
Numbers and punctuation follow the same process: look up the code, apply the same spacing rules. Digits are all five elements long, so they take more time to send than most letters. A message like "CALL 911" encodes as:
-.-. .- .-.. .-.. / ----. .---- .----
That is C, A, L, L, then a word break, then 9, 1, 1. Five elements for each digit, which is why operators use shorthand wherever possible in real transmissions.
What to do with unsupported characters
Not every character has a Morse code. Accented letters (e, u, n with a tilde), most symbols, and characters outside the Latin alphabet are not part of the ITU standard. When you encounter one during manual encoding, you skip it or substitute the closest supported character. Our translator flags any character it cannot encode rather than silently dropping it, so you know what did not make it through.
Doing it manually versus using a translator
Manual encoding is useful for learning the code, for short messages, or for situations where you want to verify an output character by character. It takes practice. A message of twenty words can take several minutes to encode by hand if you are still consulting a reference table for each letter.
The morse code translator on this site handles the lookup and spacing automatically. Type your text, get your Morse. It follows the ITU standard, applies the correct spacing, and handles punctuation. For most purposes, that is the right tool. The manual method is worth knowing so you understand what the tool is doing, and so you can spot a mistake if something looks wrong in the output.
Common encoding mistakes
A few things come up regularly when people try encoding by hand. First: forgetting the inter-letter space. Two letters run together without a gap look like a different, longer code to a receiver. Second: using the wrong separator for words. A space between words (instead of a slash or a longer gap) makes the whole message read as one long word. Third: encoding digits incorrectly. It is easy to confuse the digits that look visually similar in the table, such as 6 (-....) and B (-...). The digit is one element longer. Worth double-checking.
For the decoding side, which is a separate set of challenges, see the article on converting Morse code back to text.
A brief note on speed
Morse code speed is measured in words per minute (WPM), using the word "PARIS" as the standard unit. PARIS is 50 elements long (dots and dashes combined), so one WPM equals 50 elements per minute. A trained radio operator can send and receive at 25 to 35 WPM. The world record, set by Ted McElroy in 1939, is 75.2 WPM received. Encoding by hand while consulting a table is considerably slower. That is fine. Speed comes with practice, and practice requires knowing the alphabet first.