From 1845 until well into the second half of the 20th century, commercial telegraphic code books were used to shorten telegrams, e.g. PASCOELA = "Locals have plundered everything from the wreck.
"[1] However, these cyphers are typically "fake" words six characters long, or more, used for replacing commonly used whole phrases, and are distinct from single-word abbreviations.
Skilled telegraphists must also know many traditional International Morse code communications conventions.
Here the actual Morse code information stream sent by each station (S1ABC and S2YZ) is shown in bold face small capitals type, and is followed below each bold face transmission by an indented interpretation of the message sent, together with short explanations of the codes.
In the example casual conversation between two station operators, above, the Morse transmissions show the equal sign [=] in the same way that a simple electronic automatic Morse code reader with a one- or two-line display does: It can't distinguish context so it always displays the math symbol.
The use of the end of section prosign BT in casual exchanges essentially indicates a new paragraph in the text or a new sentence, and is a little quicker to send than a full stop ([.]
Rag chewer is a name applied to amateur radio Morse code operators who engage in informal Morse code conversations (known as chewing the rag) while discussing subjects such as: The weather, their location, signal quality, and their equipment (especially the antennas being used).
Together all of these traditional conventions serve as a somewhat cryptic but commonly understood language (Lingua Franca) within the worldwide community of amateur radio Morse code operators.
These codes and protocols efficiently encode many well known statements and questions from many languages into short simple character groups which may be tapped out very quickly.
Similar to phone texting, vowels are often left out to shorten transmissions and turn overs.