American Morse code standard for U.S. landline telegraph companies, including the dominant company, Western Union, in part because the original code, with fewer dashes, could be sent about 5% faster than International Morse. American Morse also was commonly used for domestic radio transmissions on the Great Lakes, and along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. However, International Morse predominated for ocean-going vessels, and many U.S. shipboard operators became skilled in transmitting both versions of the Code as needed. As already mentioned, American Morse is less suitable for use on cables because of the high density of dots. However, this same feature, together with the
Morse code abbreviations been used. In fact, in the above example S1 and S2 might not speak the same native language. Of course, real rag-chewing (lengthy conversations) could not be accomplished by non-native speakers without such a common language. Contesters often use a very specialized and even shorter format for their contacts. Their purpose is to process as many contacts as possible in a limited time (e.g. 100–150 contacts per hour). Morse code abbreviations Morse code abbreviations are used to speed up Morse communications by foreshortening textual words and phrases. Morse abbreviations are short forms representing normal textual words and phrases formed from