[Thanks to a friend named Steve for passing on the guts of a Dr. Dobbs
article that deals with the reform of the phonetic alphabet used for
disambiguation in voice communications.  The alphabet provided was
lacking a few letters (F, N, and S) so I filled them in and made a few
other minor changes.  If you have a better idea for F, N, or S, please
let me know.  -psl]

Dear DDJ,

Your readers might like to know that the American Sub-standards Committee
X.1.5 has recently partially approved a new phonetic alphabet for voice
communications.  Here it is:

        Letter  CodeWord
        ------  --------
        A       Aisle
        B       Bdelium
        C       Czar
        D       Djakarta
        E       Euphoria
        F       Frays
        G       Gnome
        H       Hour
        I       Ian
        J       Jose
        K       Knight
        L       Llama
        M       Mnemonic
        N       Night
        O       Oedipal
        P       Phrase
        Q       Queue
        R       Rwanda
        S       Sgraffito
        T       Tsar
        U       Urn
        V       Veldt
        W       Wrong
        X       Xanadu
        Y       Yvonne
        Z       Zwieback

A typical example of the alphabet in use is this recent
exchange:

        Recording: You really can help keep your phone costs down
        by looking up numbers in your phone book whenever possible.

        Ma Bell: What city and number, please?
         Caller: Taco Bell in San Francisco

        Ma Bell: Was that "Paco Bell?"
         Caller: No, "TACO".  'T' as in tsar, 'A' as in aisle, 'C'
                 as in czar, 'O' as in Oedipal.

        Ma Bell: Was that 'C' as in czar or 'T' as in tsar?
         Caller: Yes.

        Ma Bell: Oh.

                                        M. Gabrielson