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aa6mk atest BA7NOM BI1SUD ike3 ja8les JJMCW K9TUV KE8OMQ kenharrison KF0GHC ko4cwy ko4zsd mapleice N8YQM PR7CW skmttty test verify wardle WT5O xxlwyy

Should we learn the ampersand, or &, as a choice to learn in the characters settings?

Well the International morse ampersand is not quite the highest priority,
- though someone is bound to use it at you at some point, along with some fairly obscure Q-codes


The & currently in use is the Continental Morse version which sounds like :- "es"

( see the section "Common Punctuation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Morse_code )


So - learn it all if you can or if you just want to . . .

YMMV


cb

I hear the "&" a lot on air but I don't know what to make of it. Apparently it's a prosign for :

KA "&" attention ("-.-.-")

But attention to what?

& is .-...

As a prosign this is AS which means wait

It is non ITU-R https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITU-R but is a "convention", along with several others like $ or !

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code

https://morsecode.world/international/morse2.html




KA ( or CT ) means start up of activity or new message


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code

cb

I learnt & (or es) after I started making contacts on the air. This character was not part of the syllabus for the CW exams.

I am fairly new at morse code (2 yr 5 mo practicing LCWO) and have pondered the ITU "wait" code ( .-... ). While I haven't gotten on the air, I have been practicing / .-... / as both &/wait, and I always write it as & but interpret it as &/wait, as applicable.
On the air, I would normally plan to use .-... only as a "wait" code. In all text I would normally spell out the word "and," except I would use .-... when an ampersand is formally used as part of a proper name or something, such as in company names, logos, brand names, etc.

ES is not actually a prosign (it is sent as two letters and is a simple abbreviation for the word AND. Most experienced CW operators never send AND.) Prosigns, though represented as (usually) two letters are not sent as two letters but are run together. The most common prosigns in use on the air are AR (end of transmission), AS (wait), KN (over to you only), BT (pausing...usually to think). An informal "back to you" is BK, but it is usually sent as a two letter abbreviation for "break" so isn't technically a prosign. In 60 years of CW operating, I've never heard anyone use any punctuations except period, question mark, slash and comma. When I was licensed in 1961 (Novice, CW-only), there was an article reprinted from AST that was a "must read" for every new ham..."Your Novice Accent". Very little in ham CW procedures has changed since then and is still a valuable read for new CW ops: https://www.kb6nu.com/your-novice-accent/