The Military Alphabet is a phonetic alphabet ... This practice helps to prevent confusion between similar sounding letters, such as "m" and "n", and to clarify communications that may be garbled ...

While you might think people are just picking random words—and indeed some might be—there is actually a defined military phonetic alphabet that was established over the first half of the 1900s ...

"Alfa, Bravo, Charlie …" is an alphabet you may already ... up to appointments at 7 p.m. instead of 7 a.m. The centuries-long history of the U.S. military has allowed those who serve to ...