Hand sent code sometimes decoding as punctuation

[AESilky]

While listening to the Morse Day recording it was noticed that with hand-sent code, letters sometimes decode as punctuation. For example, UT decodes as '/' (as in BUT becoming B/ , ABOUT becoming ABO/ , and CUT becoming C/ ), SI as ';' (SIGNAL turns into ;GNAL, SIDE into ;DE , VISIT to VI;T ), and [ . - . . . ] as @ (P shows up as @ if the second dot is too long, ARE as @e if there's not quite enough space between symbols, and HAS as H@ ). Worst example? OUTSIDE decoded as O/;DE .

Punctuation in general use by KOB operators are the period, comma, question mark, ampersand, paragraph break, and occasionally exclamation point. Even the ampersand is best decoded as ES, because so many words contain that letter pair, and it is odd if they decode as '&'. For example, 'ISSUES' becomes 'ISSU&'. The letter pair 'ES' is much more common than '&' (unless, maybe if you work at 'AT&T' ('ATEST'?).