Morse Code Punctuation

Why Punctuation Deserves Its Own Page

Almost every morse code chart stops at the letters and numbers. Punctuation gets a footnote — if that. But the moment you try to send a real sentence ("Meet me at 5:30, okay?"), you need commas, colons, and question marks, and you discover that three of the most common symbols — !, $, and & — aren't even in the official ITU standard. This page is the complete reference: every punctuation mark with its code, its official status, and the history of the newest addition to the code in a century. All codes below are verified against our canonical morse table; bookmark the printable chart if you want it on paper.

The Complete Punctuation Table

Click any card to expand its usage notes. "ITU standard" means the mark appears in the ITU-R M.1677 international recommendation. "Convention" means there is no official standard, but the code is the one virtually all translation software and modern references use.

To practice any of these, paste the character into the translator tool and hit play — it will render and sound every mark above.

The Symbols That Aren't Official (!, $, &)

This is the detail most charts hide: the exclamation mark, ampersand, and dollar sign were never codified in the official ITU recommendation — informal conventions exist for them, and that is all. The ! code we use (-.-.--) is the KW digraph (the run-together codes of K and W), proposed in the 1980s by the Heathkit Company, a maker of amateur radio kits. Translation software overwhelmingly prefers the Heathkit version, but on-air use is not universal: some operators in North America and the Caribbean still send the older MN digraph (---.), carried over from American landline telegraphy. Neither is "wrong" — neither is official. The & code (.-...) is shown in many references as AS, and it doubles as the official prosign for "wait" (see below) — context tells the receiver which meaning you intended. The $ code (...-..-) comes from the old Phillips Code abbreviation SX, whose letters eventually merged into a single run-together group. The ITU's position is that currency should be sent with ISO currency codes (USD, EUR, JPY) instead, but if you are writing a dollar sign in morse, ...-..- is the code the world uses.

The @ Sign: Morse Code's First New Character in a Century

The at sign is the newest character in International Morse Code — and the first official addition since before World War I. In December 2003 the ITU voted to add it, and on 24 May 2004 — the 160th anniversary of Samuel Morse's first public telegraph transmission — the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau formally added @ ("commercial at," or commat) to the official set, with the code .--.-.. Why? Ham radio operators kept needing to exchange email addresses on air, and the old code had no way to send one. The code was built from the AC digraph: the run-together codes of A (.-) and C (-.-.), chosen because "AC" abbreviates "At Commercial" — or, as some accounts put it, an "a" inside the swirl of a "c". Now you can key your full email address over the air. Note that morse has no case, so "Name@Mail.com" arrives as one continuous lowercase string — fine for sending, but don't expect it to type your password correctly.

Prosigns: When Dots and Dashes Become Commands

Prosigns (procedural signals) are special run-together groups that control the conversation rather than carrying text: they say "end of message," "wait," or "distress." Almost all prosigns share their code with a punctuation mark or another character — the receiver distinguishes the meaning from context. Our translator supports these seven:

So when you see .-.-. in the middle of a sentence, it's a plus sign; at the end of a transmission, it's the <AR> "end of message" prosign. The famous <SOS> (...---...) is sent as one unbroken nine-element group — that is exactly why it works as a distress signal: it cannot be mistaken for anything else. Read the full story on our SOS page. The error prosign <HH> — eight dots — is sent when you make a mistake, so the receiver knows to ignore what came just before it.

Nonstandard and Variant Symbols: Know Before You Send

Beyond the main table, morse has a gray area of unofficial, regional, and historical symbols. Handle with care:

• Exclamation mark (---.) — the older MN-digraph variant, a legacy of American landline telegraphy. Still used by some North American and Caribbean operators; translation software will usually decode ---. differently, so prefer -.-.-- unless you know your audience. (Status: nonstandard, presented as reported by operator references — treat as legacy usage.)
• Underscore (..--.-) — unofficial. The traditional practice: to underline a word, send an underscore, a letter space, the word, a letter space, and another underscore. Telegraphers improvise embedded uses (like software keywords) as needed.
• Percent (%) — no single-character code. The ITU-recommended method spells it with numbers: "4%" is sent as 4-0/0, i.e. "....- -....- ----- -..-. -----" (four, hyphen, zero, slash, zero).
• Ö / Ó / Ø (---.) — unofficial letters used in some non-Latin alphabets that collide with the legacy exclamation variant. Another reason context matters.
• American Morse vs. International Morse — the original 1840s American code (with intra-character spaces and multiple dash lengths) is a different system; every code on this page is International Morse, the worldwide standard since 1865.

When to Use Each Mark: A Practical Guide

• Period .-.-.- — end of sentence. Also separates the decimal part of numbers in some operator conventions (though a plain pause is common).
• Comma --..-- — pauses inside sentences, lists, and addresses. The most-used punctuation mark on the air after the period.
• Question mark ..--.. — ends questions, exactly as in writing. In prosign-rich exchanges, ? can also stand alone to mean "say again?"
• Apostrophe .----. — contractions (DON'T) and possessives (BOB'S).
• Quotation marks .-..-. — quoted speech or titles; sent once before and once after the quoted words.
• Slash -..-. — officially the "fraction bar": fractions (3/4) and dates. Modern operators also use it in callsigns and URLs.
• Colon ---... — times (5:30), ratios, and labels before lists.
• Semicolon -.-.-. — separating closely related clauses; rare on air, but standard.
• Hyphen -....- — compound words and word breaks; the ITU also lists a "double hyphen" (=, -...-).
• Parentheses -.--. / -.--.- — asides and clarifications. But remember: -.--. is also the <KN> prosign — if it appears where an operator would invite a reply, it means "go ahead, you only."
• @ .--.-. — email addresses and handles, the code's newest citizen.

Spacing Rules Around Punctuation

Punctuation marks are treated exactly like letters for spacing: 1 unit between the dots and dashes inside a mark, 3 units between a mark and the next character, 7 units between words. So "HI, BOB" is keyed as ".... .. --..-- / -... --- -..." — the comma gets its own 3-unit letter gap before BOB's B, and the word gap is the full 7 units after the comma. Wrong gaps are the #1 reason beginners misread punctuation: with only 1 unit of space, "--..--" could blur into neighboring letters. Keep the rhythm and the marks decode themselves. For the full timing rules, see our generator page.

The Story Behind the Table

Punctuation was part of International Morse from the start: the 1865 Paris standard that unified the world's telegraphs carried the full stop, comma, question mark, and the rest. The prosigns grew up alongside them on the operators' keys — <AR>, <SK>, and <BT> were the "punctuation" of a conversation's structure. The unofficial trio (!, $, &) filled in over the following century as operators improvised, and the @ sign waited until 2004 — 160 years after Morse's first transmission — to become official. Taken together, the table above is the entire non-alphanumeric vocabulary of the world's oldest digital code. Pair it with the numbers reference and the letter pages like A in morse code for the complete system.

Frequently asked questions