Morse code translator
Type text to get Morse, or paste Morse to get text back. Both directions work as you type, and anything in the Morse box can be played as sound or as a signal lamp at any speed from 5 to 40 words per minute.
Dots and dashes, spaces between letters, / between words.
··· −−− ···
How to read the output
Morse is written with three levels of separation, and getting them right is the difference between readable and meaningless.
| SEPARATOR | MEANS | LENGTH |
|---|---|---|
| (nothing) | Elements of the same character | 1 unit |
| space | Between two characters | 3 units |
| / | Between two words | 7 units |
A unit is the length of one dot. At 20 words per minute that is 60 milliseconds, from the PARIS standard: the word PARIS is exactly 50 units long including its trailing word space, so one unit is 1200 divided by the speed in words per minute.
Common questions
How do you write Morse code?
Write a dot as a period and a dash as a hyphen, with no space between the elements of one character. Put a single space between characters and a forward slash between words. So SOS is "... --- ..." and HI THERE is ".... .. / - .... . .-. .".
Why does the translator use a slash between words?
A slash survives copy and paste, URLs and chat apps, all of which collapse repeated spaces. The older convention of a double space is still accepted as input here, but it silently breaks the moment the text is pasted anywhere.
Can Morse code handle punctuation and numbers?
Yes. ITU-R M.1677-1 defines all ten digits and common punctuation including period, comma, question mark, slash and at-sign. It does not define an exclamation mark in the international standard, though "-.-.--" is widely used. Morse has no upper and lower case.
Is this translator accurate?
The codes follow ITU-R M.1677-1, the international standard, and timing follows the PARIS convention where one unit lasts 1200 divided by the speed in words per minute. The same engine generates the audio, so what you hear is correctly timed rather than approximated.