C in Morse code

C swings evenly between long and short: dah-di, dah-di. Among the 26 letters it is the only four-element code that alternates all the way through, which gives it a rocking rhythm that is easy to pick out.

• CO-ca CO-la:

  each stressed CO is a dash and each light syllable a dot.

• CHAR-lie's AN-gels:

  the same long-short, long-short pattern.

• Cate:

  in Douglas Harder's one-word system the capital C and the tall t are dashes, and the short a and e are dots.

The guide to Morse code memory phrases has one for every letter, with the sound to say along with.

The classic slip is K, which is C without its last dot. The others each change one element:

• K:

  -.- stops after three elements. C has one more dot, so wait for the letter gap before deciding.

• Y:

  -.-- ends on a dash instead of a dot.

• F:

  ..-. opens with a dot, so it starts light where C starts heavy.

• B:

  -... keeps C's opening dash but follows it with three dots.

Practice C against K in the Sound-alike drill, and see all 26 codes side by side on the alphabet chart.

• Write it:

  hyphen, period, hyphen, period, -.-. with a space before the next letter.

• Tap it:

  press, tap, press, tap, holding each press about three times as long as a tap.

• Flash it:

  long, short, long, short. The light on this page plays at 7 WPM, under three flashes a second.

To read dots and dashes back as letters, paste them into the Morse code to English translator. CAB, for example, is -.-. .- -... and decodes letter by letter at each space.

Operators send CQ, -.-. --.-, to call any station that can hear them, and most contacts begin with it. Sent alone as a reply, C means yes or correct, and CL means the station is closing down.

The ITU standard's starting signal, sent before a transmission, is -.-.-: C run straight into T with no gap. Operators write it CT, or KA, which is the same signal split another way.

The American, or Railroad, Morse once used on US telegraph lines wrote C quite differently: two dots, a short space, then one more dot, written .. . in this page's notation. Read with today's International table, that pattern is IE, two letters. American Morse is now almost never used, so the C you will hear is the international -.-. above.