r/morse

▲ 9 r/morse+1 crossposts

LCWO--how important are: **! " ' ( ) + - : ; @**

I've finished lesson 40 and added these 10 extra characters, but I think they are really slowing me down. I currently practice these at character speed 36wpm but an effective speed of only 6wpm and I'm still struggling not to make 1-2 mistakes per minute.

I am trying to slowly bring my character speed down and my effective speed up hoping they meet in the middle somewhere between 14-17wpm, but I'm really hitting a plateau. I feel like the extra characters are a little more complex and often sound a little similar to one or two of the other characters which is really tripping me up.

Is it better for me to stick with Lesson 40 and get rid of the extra work/character spacing and then add them back, or should I stick with it and try to push through the plateau?

In your experience how important are the extra characters and if important how/when should they be added?

My biggest fear is that by practicing with such low effective wpm I'm cementing that spacing as "normal" for me and maybe letting bad habits form.

Any thoughts or advice are appreciated. :) Thank you!!!

reddit.com
u/somethingmorecrazy — 8 days ago
▲ 3 r/morse

Morse for Assistive Tech - learning morse - published.

See https://willwa.de/2026/08/11/morse-code-isnt-as-hard.html and https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17483107.2026.2715256 data from anonymous users of https://morse-learn.acecentre.net - remember this is MORSE FOR WRITING ONLY. Not morse for receiving. AT users dont typically need to listen to morse - so teaching it is a different thing than typical morse users.. Hence the discussion about visual mnemoics and auditory mneomics. Still, the sound form of dot and dah rules..

reddit.com
u/squarepushercheese — 9 days ago