Morse: a table and a timing
International Morse code is defined by the ITU (ITU-R M.1677-1). Letters are short and long tones —
dots and dashes — with a space between letters and a slash between words in written form. Measured
with the converter: SOS is ... --- ..., and HELLO WORLD is
.... . .-.. .-.. --- / .-- --- .-. .-.. -...
The written spaces are a convenience; what is transmitted is timing. A dot is one unit, a dash three, the gap inside a character one, between letters three, and between words seven. That is why the same message sounds different at different speeds and why an audio decoder has to estimate the unit before it can tell a letter gap from a word gap. A text converter has already been told the answer.
The table covers the 26 Latin letters, ten digits and common punctuation; it has no entry for accented letters, Cyrillic, CJK or emoji. The converter leaves an unmappable character out and counts it, which is honest: a number substituted for a letter would look like data rather than a convention.
Braille: cells, not letters
Unicode Braille Patterns encode the six-dot cell as a code point (U+2800 plus a bit pattern), not as a
letter. Grade 1 is a one-to-one mapping from letters to cells, with two extra signs: a capital sign
before an uppercase letter and a number sign before a run of digits. Measured: Hello
becomes ⠠⠓⠑⠇⠇⠕ — the leading ⠠ is the capital sign, not part of H.
Grade 2 Braille uses contractions (single cells for common words and letter groups) and is what published Braille usually uses; a Grade 1 converter will produce a valid but longer transcription. The tool states Grade 1 because a contraction table is language- and authority-specific, and guessing one would produce text a Braille reader might misread.
NATO: spelling for the ear
The NATO alphabet replaces each letter with a word chosen to be distinguishable over a noisy radio
channel: Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta… Measured: AB becomes Alfa Bravo. It is
not an encoding of the message — the words are spoken and the listener takes the first letter — and it
is not a substitute for spelling out digits, which have their own conventions (often “tree” for three
and “fower” for four in aviation).
The alphabet is standardised for radio telephony and is widely recognised, but it is not universal: police, maritime and amateur services have their own procedures, and a listener may not know the NATO words. When the channel is clear, plain spelling is faster; when it is not, the words are what prevent B and D, or M and N, from becoming the same sound.
Which channel, which format
The channel decides the format. Morse is for a channel where only on/off states survive — a tone, a lamp, a key. Braille is for touch, and its cell is read by a fingertip, so the six-dot pattern matters more than the code point. The NATO alphabet is for speech over a noisy link, where word recognition is more robust than letter names. Choosing a format because it is familiar rather than because it fits the channel is how a message that could have been understood gets lost.
Encoding, transcription and error
None of these formats has a checksum. A wrong dot in Morse turns E into I; a misplaced Braille cell changes a letter; a misheard NATO word gives the wrong initial. The receiver has no way to detect the error unless the message itself carries redundancy — spelling a word twice, reading back a digit string, or using a checksum in the payload. That is why radio operators read back critical values and why a Morse decoder can only report what it received, not what was sent.
The other distinction is between encoding and transcription. Morse and Braille are encodings of letters; a transliteration of a non-Latin script is a transcription of sounds, and it is not reversible without the source. NATO words are spoken prompts for letters, not a written code. Mixing these categories produces a message that looks encoded but cannot be decoded back to the original.
Where each one stops
| Format | Carries | Cannot carry |
|---|---|---|
| Morse | Latin letters, digits, common punctuation | Accents, non-Latin scripts, emoji |
| Braille (Grade 1) | Letters, digits, capital sign | Contractions, formatting, non-Latin scripts |
| NATO alphabet | Latin letters, spoken | Punctuation, digits without a separate convention |
The shared limitation is the alphabet, not the channel. If the message is not Latin text, these tools cannot carry it without a transliteration step, and that step is lossy. Decide whether the receiver needs the original spelling or just the sound before converting.