Morse code most common letter in English, the letter "E", has the shortest code: a single dot. Because the Morse code elements are specified by proportion rather than specific time durations, the code is usually transmitted at the highest rate that the receiver is capable of decoding. The Morse code transmission rate ("speed") is specified in "groups per minute", commonly referred to as "words per minute". Morse code is usually transmitted by on-off keying of an information carrying medium such as electric current, radio waves, visible light or sound waves. The current or wave is present during time period of the dot
Prosigns for Morse code codes such as Baudot or ASCII. The development of prosigns began in the 1860s for wired telegraphy. They are distinguished from common Morse abbreviations. Since Morse code communication preceded voice communications by several decades, many of the much older Morse prosigns have exact equivalent procedure "words" for use in the more recent radio telephony (voice). Prosigns may be represented in printed material either by a sequence of dots and dashes, or by a sequence of letters, which, if sent without the normal inter-character spacing (concatenated), correspond to the prosign symbol. There are at least three methods used to represent Morse