The first time I heard the Nokia 'SMS' ringtone was in a crowded railway station. Initially I thought someone was in trouble before I realised it was an 'M' not an 'O'.
As a kid, I thought "SOS" officially stood for "save our souls", later learning that this was only a mnemonic. It was only in adulthood that I learned "SOS" itself was a mnemonic, since:
Where "/" is a longer gap. S̅O̅S̅ is a "prosign", and thus a symbol in its own right. From Wikipedia [1]:
> Although the well-known calling prosign for emergency messages SOS is always represented by the three letters "SOS", it could just as well be written VZE ( ...- + --.. + . ), VGI ( ...- + --. + .. ), or even 3B ( ...-- + -... ); all of these render the same single code ...---...
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As a kid, I thought "SOS" officially stood for "save our souls", later learning that this was only a mnemonic. It was only in adulthood that I learned "SOS" itself was a mnemonic, since:
"SOS" (literal) = ... / --- / ...
S̅O̅S̅ (distress code) = ...---...
Where "/" is a longer gap. S̅O̅S̅ is a "prosign", and thus a symbol in its own right. From Wikipedia [1]:
> Although the well-known calling prosign for emergency messages SOS is always represented by the three letters "SOS", it could just as well be written VZE ( ...- + --.. + . ), VGI ( ...- + --. + .. ), or even 3B ( ...-- + -... ); all of these render the same single code ...---...
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code#Notation_and_representations" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code#Notati...
(Which is actually similar to how a lot of compression schemes work)