Punctuation In Radio Messaging

Post date: Aug 17, 2020 10:02:49 PM

Punctuation is critical to written communication. Punctuation disambiguates. Punctuation supports brevity. Punctuation is the difference between:

TIME TO EAT, GRANDMA.

and

TIME TO EAT GRANDMA.

How do we originate and relay messages with punctuation? In particular, how do we handle the case of punctuating a decimal figure? As an aside, there's a difference here between amateur procedure as documented in the Methods and Practices Guidelines (MPG) and government and military procedure as documented in the Allied Communications Publications (ACP) 125, "Radiotelephone Procedures."

In amateur procedure, if we wish to refer to a frequency such as

146.97

we will convert the group into a MIXED GROUP of

146R97

thus preserving the check working easily whether we're voicing, sending by Morse Code, or sending digitally.

Voicing on an amateur circuit,

one four six decimal niner seven

will result in three groups, or maybe four, depending on use of the proword FIGURES:

146 DECIMAL 97

This is a problem avoided when originating the traffic, allowing relay to take place verbatim, and turned back from "radio-speak" to normal speech upon delivery. Watch the video to see how it works.