Your Morse output, and a shareable link, will appear here.
Text-to-Morse conversion is not complicated, but it does have rules, and skipping the spacing rules turns a valid message into a string of dots and dashes nobody can decode. This walks through the whole process, using the same character map that powers the quick-try box above and the full translator on the home page.
Step 1: Case Stops Mattering
Morse code makes no distinction between upper and lowercase. One code covers each letter regardless of how it was typed. "Hello" and "HELLO" produce identical output, which is not a limitation so much as a reflection of how the code was built: a 19th-century radio operator never worried about capitalization.
Step 2: Look Up Each Character
Every letter, digit, and supported punctuation mark maps to one specific sequence of dots and dashes. The full table lives on the Morse code alphabet page. Here is the slice needed for the most common worked example:
| Letter | Morse Code |
|---|---|
| H | .... |
| E | . |
| L | .-.. |
| L | .-.. |
| O | --- |
HELLO breaks down letter by letter: H is four dots, E is one dot, L is dot-dash-dot-dot, L repeats, O is three dashes. Five characters, five lookups.
Step 3: Apply the Spacing Rules
This is where most people trip up. Dots and dashes inside one character run together with no gap. Between characters in the same word, insert a single space. Between words, use a forward slash with a space on each side, or simply a longer pause in audio. The ITU standard sets exact ratios for audio Morse: a dot is one unit, a dash is three units, the gap inside a character is one unit, the gap between characters is three units, and the gap between words is seven units. Written Morse captures the same idea with the space-and-slash convention.
HELLO comes out as:
.... . .-.. .-.. ---
Each group is one letter, and the spaces between them are the inter-letter gaps. Add a second word, HELLO WORLD, and a slash separates the two:
.... . .-.. .-.. --- / .-- --- .-. .-.. -..
More Worked Examples
SOS
The most recognized Morse sequence there is: ... --- .... S is three dots, O is three dashes, S again three dots. Sent as a real distress call, SOS drops the normal inter-letter spacing entirely, becoming one continuous run rather than three separate letters, which is exactly what makes it stand out from ordinary traffic.
CQ (calling any station)
CQ is what an operator sends to reach anyone listening. C is -.-. and Q is --.-, giving -.-. --.- together. Still in daily use on amateur bands.
A Short Sentence
Take "GO NOW." G is --., O is ---, so GO reads --. ---. N is -., O is ---, W is .--, giving NOW as -. --- .--. Combined:
--. --- / -. --- .--
Digits and Punctuation Follow the Same Rules
Numbers and punctuation use the same process: look up the code, apply the same spacing. Digits run five elements each, longer than most letters, so a message like "CALL 911" takes noticeably longer to send:
-.-. .- .-.. .-.. / ----. .---- .----
C, A, L, L, a word break, then 9, 1, 1. Five elements per digit is exactly why operators lean on shorthand wherever they can.
What to Do With Unsupported Characters
Not every character has a Morse assignment. Accented letters, most symbols, and anything outside the Latin alphabet fall outside the ITU standard. Encoding by hand, you skip the character or substitute the nearest supported one. The quick-try tool above flags anything it cannot encode with a # instead of silently dropping it, so nothing disappears without you noticing.
When Hand-Encoding Actually Makes Sense
Manual encoding earns its keep when you are learning the code, sending something short, or want to verify an output character by character. It takes practice: a twenty-word message can eat several minutes if you are still consulting a reference table for each letter. Beyond that, an automated tool handles the lookup and spacing in a fraction of a second and applies the ITU rules consistently, including punctuation. Knowing the manual method still matters, since it is what lets you catch a mistake if an output looks off. For the reverse direction, decoding rather than encoding, see converting Morse code back to text.
Mistakes Worth Watching For
Three things trip people up consistently. Dropping the inter-letter space makes two letters run together into something that reads as a different, longer code entirely. Using a plain space instead of a slash between words collapses the whole message into what looks like one long word. And confusing visually similar digit and letter codes, 6 (-....) against B (-...), costs a full element that is easy to miss on a quick read.
Speed, Briefly
Morse speed is measured in words per minute using PARIS as the reference word, since it runs exactly 50 timing units. One WPM equals 50 units per minute. A trained operator sends and receives at 25 to 35 WPM; the record, set by Ted McElroy in 1939, stands at 75.2 WPM received. Hand-encoding while checking a table runs far slower than that, which is fine. Speed comes later, and it starts with knowing the table. The full breakdown of the ratios involved lives on the Morse code timing page.
FAQs
Can I share a link to a specific converted message on this page?
Yes. After you convert text in the quick-try box above, the page updates its own address bar with a ?text= parameter. Copy that URL and anyone who opens it sees your text pre-loaded and already converted.
How do you separate letters and words in Morse code?
In written Morse code, a single space separates letters within the same word. Words are separated by a forward slash with spaces on either side, or simply by a wider gap in audio transmissions. The ITU standard defines the inter-letter pause as three dot-lengths and the inter-word pause as seven dot-lengths, but in written form the space and slash convention is standard.
What happens to characters that have no Morse code equivalent?
Characters outside the ITU Morse code standard, such as accented letters or symbols not in the standard set, are typically skipped or flagged rather than guessed at. The quick-try tool above marks anything it cannot encode with a # so you know exactly what did not make it through.