Editing Transposition cipher (section)

== Fractionation ==
Transposition is particularly effective when employed with fractionation – that is, a preliminary stage that divides each plaintext symbol into two or more ciphertext symbols. For example, the plaintext alphabet could be written out in a grid, and every letter in the message replaced by its co-ordinates (see [[Polybius square]] and [[Straddling checkerboard]]).<ref>
Daniel Rodriguez-Clark.
[https://crypto.interactive-maths.com/transposing-fractionated-text.html "Transposing Fractionated Ciphertext"].
</ref>
Another method of fractionation is to simply convert the message to [[Morse code]], with a symbol for spaces as well as dots and dashes.<ref>
James Lyons.
[http://practicalcryptography.com/ciphers/classical-era/fractionated-morse/ "Fractionated Morse Cipher"].
</ref>

When such a fractionated message is transposed, the components of individual letters become widely separated in the message, thus achieving [[Claude E. Shannon]]'s [[confusion and diffusion|diffusion]]. Examples of ciphers that combine fractionation and transposition include the [[bifid cipher]], the [[trifid cipher]], the [[ADFGVX cipher]] and the [[VIC cipher]].

Another choice would be to replace each letter with its binary representation, transpose that, and then convert the new binary string into the corresponding ASCII characters. Looping the scrambling process on the binary string multiple times before changing it into ASCII characters would likely make it harder to break. Many modern [[block cipher]]s use more complex forms of transposition related to this simple idea.