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I in Morse Code

I is .. - di-dit, 3 units, 180 milliseconds at 20 words per minute.

Advanced settings

Farnsworth timing: characters stay at full speed while the gaps between them grow. Set it below the speed above.

Dot / dash / letter gap / word gap -

Durations at the speed set above.

Characters without a Morse equivalent are skipped.

..

Press play in the box above - I is already in it.

How long I takes

I is 2 dots and 0 dashes. With the gaps that comes to 3 units, number 2 of 26 by length.

  • 5 WPM: 720 ms
  • 13 WPM: 277 ms
  • 20 WPM: 180 ms

The arithmetic behind them is on the timing page.

What I gets confused with

5 characters sit one element away from I, more than most letters manage:

  • A .- - a dash in second place instead of a dot
  • E . - the last dot missing
  • N -. - a dash in first place instead of a dot
  • S ... - one more dot on the end
  • U ..- - one more dash on the end

I in the tree

  • Built from: . = E, then ..
  • Carries on into: F, H, S, U and V (5 of the 26)
  • Backwards: .. = itself, a palindrome
  • Koch position: 12 of 26

The tree shows the whole shape, the trainer teaches it by ear.

Why I has this code

I makes up about 7 per cent of English text, which is number 5 of 26 by frequency, against number 2 by length. Close enough that the code is doing its job for this letter.

The lengths were set by counting, not by theory - the alphabet page has that story.

Worth knowing about I

I sits in the middle of the dot ladder: E, I, S, H and then the digit 5, each one dot longer than the last. Nowhere else in the code do five characters line up like that.

Frequently asked questions

Keep going

Alphabet
Chart
Morse tree
Koch Trainer