Morse Code Punctuation

The 13 punctuation signs in the ITU standard

The international standard for Morse code, ITU-R M.1677-1, has codes for 13 signs. These are the ones any operator should know, and the ones tagged ITU in the chart:

• Period (full stop): .-.-.-
• Comma: --..--
• Question mark: ..--..
• Apostrophe: .----.
• Slash: -..-.
• Open parenthesis: -.--.
• Close parenthesis: -.--.-
• Colon: ---...
• Equals sign (also a double hyphen): -...-
• Plus sign: .-.-.
• Hyphen or minus sign: -....-
• Quotation mark: .-..-.
• At sign (@): .--.-.

What the standard leaves out

The @ sign is the newest: the ITU added it on May 24, 2004, so email addresses could be sent. The quotation mark has one code for opening and closing quotes, and the standard writes % as zeros around a slash, 0/0.

There is no code for #, *, %, a space or a line break. The Morse code translator skips signs it has no code for and lists them under the box, so spell them out (NUMBER, PERCENT) if they matter. Curly quotes and long dashes pasted from a word processor are turned into plain quote marks and hyphens first.

Five common extras: ! & ; _ and $

The chart has five more signs tagged Extra. They are widely listed, but they are not part of the ITU standard, so the person receiving may not know them:

• Exclamation mark: -.-.-- (the letters K and W run together). It was proposed by Heathkit in the 1980s; some North American operators use an older code instead.
• Ampersand (&): .-... (A and S run together). The same code is the prosign for wait.
• Semicolon: -.-.-. (K and R run together).
• Underscore: ..--.- (unofficial).
• Dollar sign: ...-..- (S and X run together), from the Phillips Code of telegraph abbreviations. At 7 symbols it is the longest code in the chart.

Punctuation that doubles as a prosign

A prosign (procedural signal) is two letters sent as one character, with no gap between them, to control the flow of a message. Written down, it has a line over the letters, or angle brackets around them. Several prosigns have the same dots and dashes as a punctuation sign, so the meaning depends on where it falls:

• Open parenthesis ( -.--. is KN: go ahead, but only the station I am talking to.
• Equals sign = -...- is BT: start a new section or paragraph of the message.
• Plus sign + .-.-. is AR: end of the message.
• Ampersand & .-... is AS: wait.
• Question mark ? ..--.. on its own asks the other station to say that again.

Why Morse code symbols are long

Letters got short codes because they are sent all the time: E is a single dot. Punctuation signs are sent far less often, and most of them have 6 symbols. A dot lasts 1 unit and a dash 3, so a period lasts 17 units, where E lasts 1. At 20 WPM that is about a second for one period.

Length is part of the reason operators send few punctuation marks. The other reason is that a sign can be mistaken for a prosign, as the list above shows.

How operators handle punctuation in practice

In a casual radio contact, sentences usually go out with no punctuation. Operators mark breaks with BT instead. The question mark is the sign that stays in common use: it turns a Q code into a question: QTH? asks where the other station is, and QRS? asks whether to send slower.

Formal messages go further. In an ARRL radiogram, the letter X stands for a period and QUERY for a question mark, and other punctuation is spelled out (COMMA, DASH) so it can't be mistaken for a prosign. The station that delivers the message writes the periods back in.

To write a full sentence with its punctuation, type it into the Morse code translator. To read one back, paste the code into the Morse code decoder. Letters and numbers are on the Morse code alphabet chart, and digits in more detail on Morse code numbers.