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Z in Morse Code

Z is --.. - dah-dah-di-dit, 11 units, 660 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 - Z is already in it.

How long Z takes

Z is 2 dots and 2 dashes. With the gaps that comes to 11 units, number 23 of 26 by length.

  • 5 WPM: 2,640 ms
  • 13 WPM: 1,015 ms
  • 20 WPM: 660 ms

The arithmetic behind them is on the timing page.

What Z gets confused with

4 characters sit one element away from Z:

  • B -... - a dot in second place instead of a dash
  • G --. - the last dot missing
  • L .-.. - a dot in first place instead of a dash
  • Q --.- - a dash in fourth place instead of a dot

Z in the tree

  • Built from: - = T, -- = M and --. = G, then --..
  • Carries on into: no other letter - a leaf of the tree
  • Backwards: ..-- = no character at all
  • Koch position: 17 of 26

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

Why Z has this code

Z makes up about 0.074 per cent of English text, which is number 26 of 26 by frequency, against number 23 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.

Z in American Morse

The American code, used on the landline telegraph until the 1920s, wrote Z as ... . instead of --... Note the gap inside the character: American Morse used internal spaces, which is what made it so hard to read automatically and why the international code replaced it on the radio.

The full table has the other ten.

Worth knowing about Z

Add a dot to Z and it becomes the digit 7. Z is also one of only three letters whose code, read backwards, is not another character at all.

Frequently asked questions

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Alphabet
Chart
Morse tree
Koch Trainer