Last reviewed on 26 August 2026.
Wallet-card version
If you want something that fits behind a badge or in a flight bag rather than a full page, the chart compresses to a single line. Copy it, paste it into a document at about 8pt, and it fits a standard credit-card footprint:
A Alfa · B Bravo · C Charlie · D Delta · E Echo · F Foxtrot · G Golf · H Hotel · I India · J Juliett · K Kilo · L Lima · M Mike · N November · O Oscar · P Papa · Q Quebec · R Romeo · S Sierra · T Tango · U Uniform · V Victor · W Whiskey · X X-ray · Y Yankee · Z Zulu
Digits: 0 ZE-RO · 1 WUN · 2 TOO · 3 TREE · 4 FOW-ER · 5 FIFE · 6 SIX · 7 SEV-EN · 8 AIT · 9 NIN-ER
How to print this chart
Use the Print this chart button above, or your browser's own print command. A few settings make the difference between a usable cheat sheet and a wasted page:
- Orientation: portrait. The 26 rows fit one A4 or US Letter page without scaling.
- Margins: default or narrow. Anything wider pushes the Morse column onto a second sheet.
- Background graphics: off. The chart is designed to stay legible in plain black on white.
- Scale: 100%. If your printer defaults to "shrink to fit", the pronunciation column becomes hard to read at arm's length.
To keep a copy offline, print to PDF instead of paper — every modern browser offers Save as PDF in the same print dialogue, which gives you a phonetic alphabet chart PDF without needing a separate download.
How to read the chart
Each row answers one question: what do I say instead of this letter? For M you say Mike; for S, Sierra. The pronunciation column uses capitals for the stressed syllable, which is the part that carries through noise — hoh-TELL, not HOH-tell. Getting the stress right matters more than getting the vowel exactly right, because stress is what survives a compressed radio channel or a mobile call with two bars of signal.
Two spellings in the chart look like mistakes and are not. Alfa is spelled without the "ph" because "ph" is not read as an /f/ sound in every language that uses the Latin alphabet. Juliett carries a second T so that French speakers, who routinely drop a final consonant, do not turn it into "Julie". The pronunciation guide covers the full set of decisions behind the wordlist.
Which chart do you actually need?
Almost everyone searching for a phonetic alphabet chart wants the table above. A few need something different:
- Police in the United States may need the APCO chart — Adam, Boy, Charles — which is a different wordlist. See the APCO vs. NATO comparison.
- Linguists and language learners usually want the International Phonetic Alphabet, a set of sound symbols rather than code words. That is the IPA chart.
- Morse operators can work straight from the Morse column here, or from the fuller Morse code chart with punctuation and prosigns.
- Military users use the identical chart; the difference is in application, covered on the military alphabet page.
Looking up one letter
If you only need a single letter — what is M, what comes after Alfa, what is the code word for P — the letter-by-letter guide takes each of the 26 in turn with its pronunciation and the reason it was chosen. To spell a whole word, name or reference number, the phonetic alphabet converter does it in one step.