
The names of the letters of the English alphabet are "a", "bee", "cee", "dee", "e", etc. A spelling alphabet is also often called a phonetic alphabet, especially by amateur radio enthusiasts, recreational sailors in the US and Australia, and NATO military organizations, despite this usage of the term producing a naming collision with the usage of the same phrase in phonetics to mean a notation used for phonetic transcription or phonetic spelling, such as the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is used to indicate the sounds of human speech. These synonyms include spelling alphabet, word-spelling alphabet, voice procedure alphabet, radio alphabet, radiotelephony alphabet, telephone alphabet, and telephony alphabet. Spelling alphabets are called by various names, according to context. Spelling alphabets also exist for Greek and for Russian. Today the most widely known spelling alphabet is the ICAO International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, also known as the NATO phonetic alphabet, which is used for Roman letters. International air travel created a need for a worldwide standard.

Many (loosely or strictly) standardized spelling alphabets exist, mostly owing to historical siloization, where each organization simply created its own. However, to gain the advantages of standardization in contexts involving trained persons, a standard version can be convened by an organization. For example, it is common to hear a nonce form like "A as in 'apple', D as in 'dog', P as in 'paper'" over the telephone in customer support contexts. For example, in the Latin alphabet, the letters B, P, and D ("bee", "pee" and "dee") sound similar and could easily be confused, but the words "bravo", "papa" and "delta" sound completely different, making confusion unlikely.Īny suitable words can be used in the moment, making this form of communication easy even for people not trained on any particular standardized spelling alphabet. This avoids any confusion that could easily otherwise result from the names of letters that sound similar, except for some small difference easily missed or easily degraded by the imperfect sound quality of the apparatus. The words chosen to represent the letters sound sufficiently different from each other to clearly differentiate them. Nevertheless we assume no liability for the content.A spelling alphabet ( also called by various other names) is a set of words used to represent the letters of an alphabet in oral communication, especially over a two-way radio or telephone. The following tabele contains punctuation marks, signs and special characters with their names: Punctuation Marks, Signs and Special CharactersĪpostrophe / Single Quotation Mark / Primeġ We make every effort to provide accurate information on this web site. (Note: The second spelling is used primarily by the ITU and the IMO 2) Digits (ICAO/ITU/NATO Spelling Alphabet) The following table contains all digits spelled according to the international ICAO/ITU/NATO spelling alphabet: The following table contains all letters spelled according to the international ICAO/ITU/NATO spelling alphabet: Letters (ICAO/ITU/NATO Spelling Alphabet) Simply type a name, e-mail, foreign word, technical term, etc. Now you can spell the word immediately on the phone without having to think about it. Just type the word and it will be spelled automatically according to the international ICAO/ITU/NATO spelling alphabet (also called phonetic alphabet or radiotelephony spelling alphabet) - from "Alfa for A", "Bravo for B", "Charlie for C" and so on to "Zulu for Z".

On this page you will also find all tables containing the letters, digits as well as most often used punctuation marks, signs and special characters with their names.Very helpful when talking to your business partners on the phone, but also for dicatation and voice radio.
#Radiotelephony spelling alphabet full
Punctuation marks, signs and special characters are also presented with their full names.IMO (International Maritime Organization),įAA (American Federal Aviation Administration),ĪNSI (American National Standards Institute), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), ITU (International Telecommunication Union),

ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization),
