Word · Copy · Practice

Eye in Morse Code

Copy the Morse code for Eye, hear it played back, or open it in the translator to edit it.

Eye
. -.-- .
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Letter by letter

How "Eye" is built in Morse

Eye is 3 characters — 3 dots and 3 dashes in all. Here is each letter with its Morse code so you can send or write it one symbol at a time:

E .
Y -.--
E .

Sending Eye by sound or light

Eye is 21 Morse units long, counting a 1-unit gap inside each character and a 3-unit gap between letters. At a beginner's 5 words per minute that is 5.0 seconds of signal; an experienced operator at 25 WPM sends it in 1.0 seconds.

Speed5 WPM13 WPM20 WPM25 WPM
Time to send5.0 s1.9 s1.3 s1.0 s

Why the gaps matter

Run the marks together with no letter gaps — as happens on evenly spaced beads or an engraving — and Eye becomes .-.--.. That string can be split into real Morse characters in 28 different ways, so a reader cannot tell which one you meant. Keep a visible gap between letters, or read why most Morse jewelry is unreadable.

Saying it out loud

Morse is not the only way a word gets through a noisy channel. When an operator has to spell Eye by voice, each letter becomes its NATO phonetic word — the same alphabet used by aviation and the military, and the reason “B” is never mistaken for “D”:

Echo · Yankee · Echo

Stressed as ECK oh — YANG key — ECK oh. The full table is on the NATO alphabet page.

How to read it

The format in one line

Dot
.   one short signal (1 unit)
Dash
-   one long signal (3 units)
Letter gap
a single space between letters (3 units)
Word gap
/   with surrounding spaces (7 units)

Keep going

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