WinKeyer Characters

The spacing between characters and words in your CW messages can be fine-tuned using features of your WinKeyer:

To change the duration of the word space, change the Contest Spacing option in the Keying group in the Morse Keyers window. The standard duration for a word space is 7 units. Contest spacing shortens the duration to 6 units. This spacing was popularized by K1EA in his CT contest software, and is also known as “CT” spacing.
To fine-tune the spaces between characters or words, insert the vertical bar character (|) in your message definitions. The vertical bar character is the WinKeyer gap character. Each vertical bar adds a key-up delay of half a unit.

A unit is the duration of the key-down portion of a dot, equal to 1200/speed in milliseconds, with speed in words per minute. The duration of a dash is 3 units. The duration of the space between dots and dashes forming a Morse character is 1 unit. The duration of the space between Morse characters is 3 units.

You can use any of the characters recognized by the WinKeyer in Morse messages; unrecognized characters are ignored. You can use any of the recognized characters in Immediate Morse Mode as well, except that characters defined as Special Keys take precedence unless you enable the Ignore Special Keys in Immediate Morse Mode option in the Special Keys pane of Messages preferences.