When spelling something phonetically, how do you convey letter case? [closed]

Question

Say you need to read someone their password over the phone and you spell it phonetically so that there is no confusion between M and N etc.

Now that is straight forward but what if the password is mixed letter case?

Let's take this password: "AbcDe".

What is the correct way to spell out this password so that the user at the end of the phone knows which characters are upper case and which are not?

Answer 1

I don't think there's a "correct" way to do this, but there are several common or efficient ways to do it.

I would start by summarizing the password, and then giving the particulars. In other words, I'd begin by saying:

The password is five characters, a-b-c-d-e, mixed case; now, let me give you the case of each letter...

Then, with pauses between each character, I might follow Andrew's suggestion (that is, I might follow the ICAO Phonetic Alphabet), or, depending on who was on the other end of the phone, I might instead use:

• Upper case "A", as in Adam;
• Lower case "b", as in Bob;
• Lower case "c", as in cat;
• Upper case "D", as in dog...

using common names or everyday words.