A chip for every character
Each character sits directly beside the word that stands for it, in the order you will read them. Following your finger down a reference beats parsing a paragraph of code words and hoping you kept your place.
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NATO Phonetic Alphabet Converter
Turn a booking reference, postcode, serial number, or password into Alfa Bravo Charlie one character at a time, with capital marking, named punctuation, and the ICAO pronunciation beside every code word.
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9 characters spelled across 1 word.
Text to spell
What do you have to read out?
Case is preserved so the capital marks stay meaningful. Line breaks count as word breaks.9 / 500
Spelled out
Character by character
9 spoken items · 5 letters · 3 digits · 1 symbol
XX-rayECKS rayJJuliettJEW lee ETT7SevenSEV enQQuebeckeh BECK-Dash4FourFOW erZZuluZOO looKKiloKEY loh9NineNIN er
Spaced output · what the copy button gives you
51 characters
X-ray Juliett Seven Quebec Dash Four Zulu Kilo Nine
Alfa, not Alpha
Two of the twenty-six words are spelled against the dictionary on purpose. Alfa loses its ph because a great many languages never read those two letters as an f sound, and Juliett gains a second t so that speakers used to a silent word-final t still sound it. Writing them the official way keeps the reading predictable for whoever is listening.
Written plainly, spoken oddly
For the digits, the standard fixes the sound rather than the spelling. You write three and nine, but the prescribed delivery is TREE and NIN-er. Dropping the th and adding a syllable are what keep those two intelligible through interference, a headset, and an accent all at once.
One list, several standards
The twenty-six code words used by NATO, by ICAO for civil aviation, and by the ITU are the same twenty-six words. Where the standards part company is the treatment of numbers, which is the one thing worth agreeing on with the other party before a long string of digits.
Reference chart
The full NATO phonetic alphabet
All twenty-six code words with the written pronunciation ICAO publishes alongside them, plus the ten digits. Syllables printed in capitals are the ones to lean on. Rows marked “in your text” contain a character from the text you entered above.
A – M
| Character | Code word | Spoken as |
|---|---|---|
| A | Alfa | AL fah |
| B | Bravo | BRAH voh |
| C | Charlie | CHAR lee |
| D | Delta | DELL tah |
| E | Echo | ECK oh |
| F | Foxtrot | FOKS trot |
| G | Golf | GOLF |
| H | Hotel | hoh TELL |
| I | India | IN dee ah |
| J | JuliettIn your text | JEW lee ETT |
| K | KiloIn your text | KEY loh |
| L | Lima | LEE mah |
| M | Mike | MIKE |
N – Z
| Character | Code word | Spoken as |
|---|---|---|
| N | November | no VEM ber |
| O | Oscar | OSS cah |
| P | Papa | pah PAH |
| Q | QuebecIn your text | keh BECK |
| R | Romeo | ROW me oh |
| S | Sierra | see AIR rah |
| T | Tango | TANG go |
| U | Uniform | YOU nee form |
| V | Victor | VIK tah |
| W | Whiskey | WISS key |
| X | X-rayIn your text | ECKS ray |
| Y | Yankee | YANG key |
| Z | ZuluIn your text | ZOO loo |
Digits 0 – 4
| Character | Code word | Spoken as |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Zero | ZE RO |
| 1 | One | WUN |
| 2 | Two | TOO |
| 3 | Three | TREE |
| 4 | FourIn your text | FOW er |
Digits 5 – 9
| Character | Code word | Spoken as |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Five | FIFE |
| 6 | Six | SIX |
| 7 | SevenIn your text | SEV en |
| 8 | Eight | AIT |
| 9 | NineIn your text | NIN er |
The digits are written the ordinary way and spoken the prescribed way: you write three and nine, and you say TREE and NIN-er. Aviation procedure also reads numbers one digit at a time rather than as a quantity, the exception being whole hundreds and thousands, which is worth copying whenever the other party has to write the number down.
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Uppercase & Lowercase Converter
Normalise a reference to a single case before spelling it, so every capital mark you read out means something.
How it works
From a string of characters to something sayable.
A reference that is perfectly clear on screen falls apart the moment it becomes speech: B collides with V, M with N, and one clipped digit costs the whole call. Swapping in a distinct word for every character removes the collisions, and this converter performs that swap in the exact order you will read them.
- 01
Paste what you have to read out
Drop in the reference, postcode, licence key, or password. It never leaves the tab, so a live credential is as safe here as in your own notes.
- 02
Say what matters about it
Switch on capital marking when case is part of the code, and decide whether digits and punctuation deserve names of their own.
- 03
Choose a shape and copy it
Spaced, dashed, one word per line, or numbered. Copy the plain version for a message, or the pronunciation version for someone reading it cold.
Built for reading things out
Capitals, digits, punctuation, and the awkward characters.
Capital marking for passwords
Case is the first thing that disappears when a code becomes speech. Marking capitals prefixes every upper-case letter with Capital, which is often the whole difference between a password that works and one that does not.
Punctuation with a name
Hyphens, at signs, underscores, slashes, and hashes each get the name people actually say on a call, so nothing gets described as that little line thing halfway through.
Four ways to lay it out
A spaced line to paste into chat, dashes for a ticket note, one word per line for reading down a screen, and a numbered list for anything long enough to lose your place in.
Nothing disappears quietly
Accented letters, emoji, and non-Latin scripts have no code word. They are named with their Unicode code point instead of being dropped, so you know precisely what still needs describing another way.
The delivery, not just the word
Every entry carries the written pronunciation published with it, so Quebec reads keh-BECK and Juliett reads JEW-lee-ETT even for someone meeting the list for the first time.
Phonetic alphabet questions
Alfa, Juliett, niner, and where the list is used.
Why is it Alfa and not Alpha?+
Because the two letters ph are not read as an f sound in most of the world. The list was built to survive being read aloud by people whose first language is not English, so several words are written the way they need to sound rather than the way a dictionary spells them. Alfa is the clearest example, and Juliett is the other.
Why does Juliett end in two t's?+
So the final consonant actually gets sounded. A reader used to a silent word-final t (French being the obvious case) would turn the code word for J into Julie, and doubling the letter forces the ending out. It is the same instinct that produced Alfa: fix the spelling so the pronunciation cannot drift.
Are the NATO, ICAO, and ITU alphabets different?+
For the letters, no. All three use the same twenty-six code words, which is exactly why the alphabet ended up everywhere. What varies between them is the handling of numbers and the procedural words each service layers on top. If someone asks for the military alphabet or the aviation alphabet, this list is what they mean. Police forces are the exception worth knowing about: British forces use these words, while many American ones still use the older APCO list that starts Adam, Boy, Charles, David.
Why do pilots say niner and tree?+
A single syllable is easy to lose. Nine picks up a second one so it cannot be heard as five over a noisy link, or as the German nein, and three drops its th because that sound is missing from many languages and is among the first things to vanish under static. Note that only the delivery changes: the digits are still written as ordinary numbers.
How should I read a password over the phone?+
Turn on capital marking and punctuation naming, then work through the chips in order. The password hV7#q opens Hotel, Capital Victor, Seven, Hash, Quebec; only the V is announced as a capital, because only the V is one. Confirm the total count at the end rather than re-reading the whole thing, because the usual failure is a character dropped in the middle, not one misheard.
What happens to characters like é, ñ, or an emoji?+
The alphabet only ever covered A to Z, so there is no code word for them. This converter lists every such character under the input with its Unicode code point and leaves it untouched in the copied text, which keeps you from reading a string that quietly lost a letter. In conversation you describe them: e acute, n with a tilde.
Should digits be read as words or as figures?+
As individual words, almost always. Four four one cannot be confused with anything, whereas four hundred and forty-one invites the listener to hear a rounded figure and write something else. Turn the digit option off only when the person on the other end already has the number in front of them.
Where is the phonetic alphabet actually used?+
Air traffic control and maritime VHF are the classic settings, together with military radio, but most of its daily work happens in ordinary offices: call centres confirming reference numbers, support desks reading licence keys, dispatchers confirming consignment numbers, and anyone spelling an unfamiliar surname to a stranger.
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