Morse Code Alphabet

Each letter from A to Z and number from 0 to 9 has its own unique combination of dots and dashes in Morse code. While this might seem straightforward, there's actually a clever design behind which characters get which patterns.

At first glance, the patterns appear random - there's no obvious alphabetical logic to why 'E' is just a single dot while 'J' requires four symbols. But Alfred Vail, who helped develop the system, had a smart idea: assign shorter codes to letters that appear more frequently in English text. This means common letters like E, T, and A use fewer dots and dashes, making messages faster to transmit.

Want to see this in action? Count how often each letter appears in any English sentence. You'll notice that letters with the shortest Morse codes tend to show up most often.

Looking at the chart above, you can spot this pattern clearly. Letters like E (·), I (··), and S (···) have short, simple codes because they're used constantly. Meanwhile, less common letters like J (·---), Q (--·-), and Y (-·--) have longer, more complex patterns since they don't appear as frequently in typical messages.