Greetings and celebrations119 units
Good morning in Morse code
Good morning in Morse code is --. --- --- -.. / -- --- .-. -. .. -. --., 11 letters with a word gap after GOOD. For a faster hello first thing, do what radio operators do and key just GM, --. --, the opening letter of each word. It takes about 1.3 seconds at 18 WPM, and it belongs to a small set of greetings operators pick by the time of day.
Hear it at your speed (WPM)
At 18 WPM it takes 7.9 seconds (119 units).
Letter by letter
Every letter of the phrase, with its code and how it sounds. Tap a letter to learn it.
GM, GA, GE and GN: greetings by the clock
Operators choose their greeting from a set of two-letter forms tied to the hour:
GM:
good morning.
GA:
good afternoon.
GE:
good evening.
GN:
good night.
GA doubles as go ahead, and GN can also mean gone. In a sample exchange, one station greets the other with GA DR OM, good afternoon, dear old man, the friendly way operators address each other. GM itself is simply the dah-dah-dit of G followed by the two dashes of M.
Hear the difference: the first card plays “Good morning” at full speed, the second plays the same letters with a word-length pause after each, the way to learn it by ear.
--. --- --- -.. / -- --- .-. -. .. -. --.
119 units · 7.9 s at 18 WPM
--. / --- / --- / -.. / -- / --- / .-. / -. / .. / -. / --.
155 units · 10.3 s at 18 WPM
Which one is “Good morning”?
Test your ear in three rounds. Each round plays three signals; pick the real “Good morning”.
Round 1 of 3 · by sound
How it’s timed. A dot lasts one unit and a dash three. “Good morning” has 10 dots and 19 dashes, 67 units of sound, plus 18 1-unit gaps inside letters, 9 3-unit gaps between letters and 1 7-unit gap between words: 119 units in all. At 18 WPM one unit lasts 67 ms, so it takes 7.9 seconds.
- Letters
- 11
- Words
- 2
- Dots and dashes
- 10 · 19
- Length
- 119 units
- At 18 WPM
- 7.9 s
- Collection
- Greetings and celebrations
How to send “Good morning”
The rhythm is the same whatever you send it with: short for a dot, three times as long for a dash, a short pause between letters and a longer one between words.
By sound
Hum it, whistle it or press a buzzer: short for a dot, about three times as long for a dash, with a short pause between letters. Turn on Repeat in the player above to hear it on a loop, or make it your phone's alert with the Ringtone maker.
By light
Flash a flashlight, a phone light or a lamp. A clear difference between short and long matters more than speed: at 7 WPM a short flash lasts 0.17 s and a long one 0.51 s. Turn on Light in the player, or open the Flashlight signaler with “Good morning” loaded.
Tap or knock it
A tap can't be held, so use spacing: quick taps for dots, slower taps for dashes. Knocking on a wall is usually tap code instead, where each letter is its row and then its column on a 5 by 5 grid. In tap code, “Good morning” is 2,2 3,4 3,4 1,4 / 3,2 3,4 4,2 3,3 2,4 3,3 2,2, and the Tap code translator knocks it out for you.
Blink it
Quick blinks for dots, eyes held shut a little longer for dashes, and a pause between letters. “Good morning” takes 29 blinks in all, so it works best face to face with someone who knows it is coming.
Feel it
Squeeze a hand, short and long, so only the two of you know. On a phone, Vibrate in the player buzzes it on Android and taps it on an iPhone with iOS 18 or later, and the Vibration pattern tool lets you change the speed or copy the pattern for an app or a watch.
To tap it on a screen and see each letter as you key it: Morse keyboard
“Good morning” next to similar phrases
How “Good morning” compares with phrases people send alongside it, each played at 18 WPM.
Heavier than good night
Three O's, three dashes each, give good morning almost half its dashes, two in good and one in morning, so the phrase is mostly long tones when heard aloud. Good night, sent the same way, is 93 units with 13 dashes and 11 dots; good morning is the longer and heavier of the pair at 119 units.
The morning song that became Happy Birthday
The tune sung at birthdays began as "Good Morning to All", published in 1893 in Song Stories for the Kindergarten and traditionally credited to the sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill, though their authorship is disputed. Patty Hill used it in her kindergarten class as a greeting young children could sing easily. The birthday words were fitted to it later; their code is on happy birthday in Morse code.
Make “Good morning” into something
Each tool opens with the phrase already filled in.
Good questions
Frequently asked questions.
What does __ __ mean in Morse code?
It is M. Two dashes on their own, --, spell the letter that starts morning, and in the operators' GM they come straight after the dah-dah-dit of G. On a printed greeting, check each run of dashes: one more makes O, and good morning holds three of those.
What are GA and GE in Morse code?
GA, --. .-, is good afternoon, and GE, --. ., is good evening. Both open on the same G as GM and GN, so it is the second letter that carries the time of day: M for morning, A for afternoon, E for evening and N for night.
Do you send the slash in good morning?
No. The slash in --. --- --- -.. / -- --- .-. -. .. -. --. is only how the seven-unit word gap is written on paper. If you keyed a real slash, -..-., a decoder would show a / between the words instead of a space.
Characters to know
The characters “Good morning” leans on, each with a page of its own.
More phrases
Something else to say? Translate any text or see all Morse code phrases and words.