Military Alphabet Chart: NATO & Western Union Standards

Also called a spelling alphabet or a phonetic alphabet, (not to be confused with the entirely different International Phonetic Alphabet,) this is a system of assigning to each letter of the alphabet a word that begins with that letter. This way, if something has to be spelled over a radio, telephone, etc. there is much less chance of the wrong information being transmitted.

The military, police departments and radio operators all make frequent use of this. Phone-based customer service and technical support also use it, but with more informal construction (any word will do), for the same reasons. The most common alphabets are shown below, from A to Z.