C as in Cat

D as in Dog

A as in Apple

P as in …uhhhh…P as in….Panipuri

Over the years I’ve had many such embarrassing conversations with customer support agents. I can only imagine the puzzled look on their faces when they find out the weird range of my thoughts. I find peace hoping that this is common occurrence–it’s not like it keeps me up at nights but I could certainly do without these awkward exchanges.

So what helped me?

The NATO phonetic alphabet.

What is it?

A set of words used to replace letters while communicating. For example, the word “Alpha” is used in place of the letter “A”. Similarly, 26 such words with very distinct sounds were chosen to make up the NATO phonetic alphabet.

The nice people over at Outside Open have put it in a printer friendly PDF format.

Here are 4 reasons why you should know it.

1. Phone conversations with customer support agents will be smoother

Ever been asked for a serial number that seems to have over a hundred characters? Or a seemingly unending confirmation code while talking to your travel agent?

*Cue eye roll*

Now imagine doing it on a poor connection.

Enter, the NATO alphabet. The words that make it up have distinct sounds and rarely get confused with each other, even when the reception is bad.

2. International calling – Spell any word easily