N in Morse code

N is one long tone and one short one. At 18 WPM the dash lasts 200 ms, the gap 66.7 ms and the dot 66.7 ms, about 333 ms in all. Only E, T, I and A are as short or shorter.

• Say it:

  dah-dit, heavy then light.

• Tap it:

  one long press, then a quick tap.

• Flash it:

  a long blink followed by a short one.

• Write it:

  a hyphen and then a period, with no gap.

Two Ns in a row show why letter gaps matter. NOON is -. --- --- -. in Morse code, 41 units or about 2.7 seconds at 18 WPM, and it starts and ends on the same dah-dit. Try other words on the Morse code translator.

Say NA-vy with the stress on the first syllable: the stressed beat is the dash, the light one the dot. “NAME it” and “NIK-ki” have the same shape. Douglas Harder's written mnemonic is No, a tall capital N for the dash and a short o for the dot.

For the matching phrases for the rest of the alphabet, see the Morse code mnemonics guide.

Reverse N and you get A; swap its dots and dashes and you also get A. That makes the pair the easiest to confuse among the short letters, so listen for which comes first, the long tone or the short one.

• A:

  N reversed, .- starting on the dot.

• T:

  one dot shorter, - with the dash alone.

• D:

  one dot added, so -.. ends on two dots.

• K:

  one dash added, so -.- closes with a long tone.

Change one mark instead and N becomes I (two dots) or M (two dashes). The Sound-alike drill mixes these short letters until you hear the difference without thinking.

Short letters like N blend into their neighbors when the gaps between letters are lost, for example in a puzzle written as one long string. Each run below has more than one reading:

• Dash, dot, dot can be D, or N followed by E, or T followed by I.
• Dash, dot, dash can be K, or N followed by T, or T followed by A.
• Dash, dot, dash, dot can be C, NN, or K followed by E, among others.

To work out a run like that, the Morse decoder without spaces lists the possible readings as ranked guesses.

The number 9 is ----. in Morse code, four dashes and a dot. Contest operators shorten it to N, the same final dash and dot, so the report 599 becomes ..... -. -. in Morse code, 25 units instead of 49. The receiving operator knows from context that the Ns are nines.

Sent alone in a conversation, N can also mean no, just as C can mean yes. Both shorthands are listed with others under Morse code abbreviations.