NATO phonetic alphabet by those who exchange voice messages by radio or telephone, regardless of language differences or the quality of the communication channel. The 26 code words in the NATO phonetic alphabet are assigned to the 26 letters of the English alphabet in alphabetical order as follows: , Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, , Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu. Strict adherence to the prescribed spelling words is required in order to avoid the problems of confusion that the spelling alphabet is designed to overcome. As noted in a
APCO radiotelephony spelling alphabet for "E", or "Yesterday" for "Y". With the ultimate goal of clarity, especially in circumstances where signals can be garbled, the use of the word "Ocean" seems to be advantageous in the radio communication of the letter "O" because it begins with the long, clear vowel "O". The phonetic words "Ida" and "Union" feature this same advantage. However, spelling alphabets seem to rarely use initial long vowels. With the exception of "Uniform", none of the initial vowels in the NATO alphabet is like this. In an earlier U.S. military alphabet, "A" was indicated by "Able", which does start with a