NATO phonetic alphabet
most widely used spelling alphabet
The NATO phonetic alphabet, officially the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, is an internationally recognized set of names for the letters of the Latin alphabet and the Arabic digits. It is most commonly used in radio communication, where the usual names of the letters are likely to be misheard.
It was defined in 1955–1956 by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
Usage
"Spelling alphabets" are used to distinguish letters when spelling out words. The alphabet is designed to minimize potential confusion, as radio and telephonic communication can be subject to static or other interference. For example, the message "proceed to map grid DH98" would be read out as "proceed to map grid Delta-Hotel-Niner-Eight".
Although such codes are commonly called "phonetic alphabets", they are not phonetic in the sense of phonetic transcription systems such as the International Phonetic Alphabet, nor are they alphabets used to write out messages, but rather clearer names for the letters of an alphabet.
Civilian industry uses the code words to avoid similar problems in the transmission of messages by telephone systems. For example, it is often used in the retail industry, where customer or site details are conveyed by telephone (e.g., to authorize a credit agreement or confirm stock codes), though ad hoc code words are often used in that instance. It has been used by information technology workers to communicate, by voice, very long serial numbers and reference codes.
“NATO phonetic alphabet” enters the record as most widely used spelling alphabet. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what NATO, phonetic and alphabet can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q190194. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1955 and 1956.
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This entry incorporates text from “NATO phonetic alphabet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.