E in Morse code

When Alfred Vail extended Samuel Morse's code to letters, he gave the shortest patterns to the letters used most. He judged how common each one was by counting the printing type in a newspaper's type cases in Morristown, New Jersey. E, about one letter in eight in English text, came out on top and got a single dot.

The code was revised several times before the international version of 1865, and most letters changed. E is one of only four letters, with H, K and N, whose code is the same as in Morse and Vail's original.

E is one short click with silence around it. Memory phrases for it are just one light syllable, such as "eh!" or "eek", and in Douglas Harder's one-word system it is simply a short e. More phrases for every letter are in the guide to Morse code mnemonics.

• T:

  - is the other one-element letter, a single dash. Short is E, long is T.

• I:

  .. is two dots. If a second click follows before the letter gap, it was I, not E.

• A:

  .- starts with E's dot and adds a dash.

At speed, E can slip by between longer letters. The Sound-alike drill trains the dot ladder from E up through I, S, H and 5, and the alphabet chart shows how many letters start with E's dot.

Stack dots with no gap and E grows into other characters: two are I, three S, four H and five the digit 5. Eight dots in a row, ........, is the ITU error signal, which an operator sends to mark a mistake.

E also stands in for the digit 5 as a cut number, one unit instead of nine. And the ITU table lists one accented letter, É, whose code ..-.. holds a dash between two pairs of dots.

• Write it:

  a single period, with a space on each side so it is not read as punctuation or merged with the next dot.

• Tap it:

  one quick tap, then a pause three taps long before the next letter.

• Flash it:

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

Spacing is everything with E. EYE is . -.-- ., and without the spaces the first dot would join Y and change the word. Type any word into the Morse code translator and it places the gaps for you.