Lotus Notes Is Spelled Lima-Oscar-Tango-Uniform-Sierra...

"You must work for the airlines," said the Denver Stapleton Airport lost and found representative on the telephone.

"Why do you say that?," I replied.

"Because you spell just like they do!"

What were we talking about? Well I had just spelled out my home address in the way that I learned to do it on the telephone or on the radio. Instead of saying "F as in Frank, E as in Eric", etc. etc., I used the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet, saying Foxtrot-Echo-Alp Many people may not be familiar with this alphabet. In a nutshell, here is how it is described on Wikipedia:

The NATO phonetic alphabet, more formally the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet, is the most widely used spelling alphabet. Though often called "phonetic alphabets", spelling alphabets have no connection to phonetic transcription systems like the International Phonetic Alphabet. Instead, the NATO alphabet assigns code words to the letters of the English alphabet acrophonically so that critical combinations of letters (and numbers) can be pronounced and understood by those who transmit and receive voice messages by radio or telephone regardless of their native language, especially when the safety of navigation or persons is essential. The paramount reason is to ensure intelligibility of voice signals over radio links.

If every schoolchild and adult were taught to use this system, especially those who work in telephone-based customer service, life and communication would be far less daunting when making customer service calls. So for those who would like to learn this very simple system, here it is:



So the next time you are on a call with customer service, and you are getting frustrated because things seem to be getting really foxtrot-uniform, just pull out this chart and have at it. It really does help clear up communication. I "say again"*, it really does help clear up communication.

*In the military, you never say repeat, because that is a term specific to artillery barrages. If you say "repeat", it means to fire again. That is why if you ever hear a person use the phrase "say again", they have some ties to the military in their background.