How to copy and paste Morse code so it reads right

Morse code survives copy and paste only if every dit is still a plain period, every dah a plain hyphen, and the spaces between letters and words are still where they were. It breaks when software tidies the text on the way: smart punctuation can turn two hyphens into one long dash and three periods into an ellipsis, a web page can squeeze several spaces into one, or the Morse was written with look-alike characters in the first place. Fix the source when you can, and check the paste when you cannot.

The ways pasted Morse goes wrong

Hyphens merged into a dash. Smart punctuation, in some text editors and in some website and blog tools, can turn two hyphens into a single en dash or em dash, and three hyphens into an em dash, depending on the software. The letter M is two dahs, --, and after the trip it is one character that looks like one long dah. O, ---, can suffer the same fate, and so can any longer run of dahs, such as the figure 0.

Periods merged into an ellipsis. Some software, often a word processor or a website’s editor, turns three periods into one ellipsis character, …. S is exactly three dits, ..., so it is the first casualty, and H, ...., can come out as an ellipsis followed by a period. On screen the ellipsis looks almost the same as three periods, which is why this one goes unnoticed.

Spaces lost. In Morse, a space is part of the message: it ends a letter. Web pages usually show a run of spaces as a single space, and so can some messaging apps, so a word gap written as extra spaces turns into a letter gap and two words run together. Copying from a PDF can go the other way and add a line break wherever a line happened to wrap.

Look-alike characters. Some charts and sites write dits as middle dots, ·, or bullets, •, and dahs as en dashes, em dashes, minus signs or underscores. They look fine to a person, but a translator expecting periods and hyphens may skip them, and a row of long dashes is hard to count even by eye.

A full stop that joins in. When Morse sits at the end of a sentence, the sentence’s own full stop gets copied with it and reads as one more dit. S becomes H, and E at the end of a word becomes I.

Turn off smart dashes on a Mac

On macOS 14 Sonoma and later, the switch is in Keyboard settings:

1. Open System Settings, then click Keyboard.
2. Under Text Input, click Edit next to Input Sources.
3. Select All Input Sources, then turn off “Use smart quotes and dashes”.
4. Click Done.

In many apps, the Edit menu has a switch of its own: choose Edit, Substitutions, then Smart Dashes. If an app keeps turning hyphens into dashes after you change the system setting, look there.

Two things to know. First, switching it off stops new conversions; it does not repair dashes that are already in your text. Second, the conversion often does not happen on your Mac at all. If someone wrote the Morse in a word processor or published it through a website’s editor, the dashes and ellipses were made before you ever copied it, and you have to fix them by hand. An iPhone has a similar switch in its keyboard settings.

Write Morse that survives the trip

If you are the one sharing Morse, a few habits make it paste cleanly almost anywhere:

• Plain characters only. A period for a dit, a hyphen for a dah. No middle dots, bullets or long dashes, however neat they look.
• One space between letters. Exactly one.
• A slash between words, with a space on each side: .... .. / - .... . .-. . for HI THERE. A slash still marks the word gap after a web page has squeezed the spaces.
• Morse on its own line. Keep it away from sentence punctuation, so no full stop or comma sticks to the last group.
• Use code formatting where there is one. On sites and in editors that support code spans or code blocks, put the Morse in one. Many tools leave code alone, so no dashes or ellipses appear, and the monospace type makes every dit and dah the same width.
• Translate it back after you paste. Run what you pasted through a translator, or by hand, before you send it. If M comes back as T, or a word suddenly has a gap in it, look for a dash, an ellipsis or a lost space.

When the destination is out of your hands, such as a printed card or a site you cannot control, an image of the Morse cannot be reformatted at all. How to send a Morse code message as an image people can decode covers that route.

Repairing Morse that has already broken

If you have been handed Morse that came through a smart punctuation filter, you can usually rebuild it.

1. Replace each ellipsis with three periods. Copy one ellipsis from the text, paste it into your editor’s find and replace, and replace all. Copying the character from the text is easier than finding it on the keyboard, and the same trick works for every odd character below.
2. Replace middle dots and bullets with periods, and underscores with hyphens.
3. Rebuild the long dashes one at a time. This is the step that needs judgment. If every dah in the message is the same long dash, the writer simply used it for a dah: replace each with one hyphen. If long dashes sit among plain hyphens, a filter probably merged them: an en dash most likely stood for two hyphens, an em dash for two or three, depending on the software. Try each length and keep the one that makes a real letter in a real word.
4. Put the word gaps back. Where a word clearly ends, add a slash. Context does most of the work; Morse code to text has a method for groups that will not translate.
5. Strip anything that is not Morse, such as a trailing full stop, quotation marks or a comma, unless you are sure it belongs to the message.

For the conventions behind all of this, see How to write Morse code in text.

What Dot & Dash accepts when you paste

If you paste Morse into Dot & Dash, Transcribe’s Morse to Text reads the usual periods and hyphens, with spaces between letters and / between words. It also reads a middle dot or a bullet as a dit and an underscore or en dash as a dah, and it splits words at |, at three or more spaces, or at a new line, so many look-alike notations come through. Any other character is ignored, which means an em dash or an ellipsis character is skipped rather than read as dahs or dits: replace those two before you paste. And because an en dash counts as one dah, a pair of hyphens that a filter merged into one en dash loses a dah, so check the letters M and O first.

Questions

Why does my pasted Morse code show an ellipsis?

Most likely some software, such as a word processor or a website’s editor, turned three periods into a single ellipsis character. Turn off its automatic punctuation if you can, and replace each ellipsis in the text with three plain periods.

Should I use a slash or extra spaces between Morse words?

A slash, with a space each side. Extra spaces are easily squeezed into one when the text is pasted or shown on a web page, and then two words run together.

Does switching off smart dashes fix Morse I already typed?

No. It only stops new conversions. Dashes and ellipses already in the text have to be replaced by hand, or with find and replace.

Can I write dits as middle dots instead of periods?

You can, and they look tidy, but plain periods are safer. Some translators and readers do not accept middle dots, and periods survive more places without being changed.