Scott Kostyshak <skostysh <at> lyx.org> writes:
> PS. "Roger" strangely works fine here. It is an expression that is often > used in this context. It comes from radio communication, I believe (or > at least the movies suggest that). In order to confirm that you received > what the interlocutor said (because radio communication can be noisy), > you say "Roger that" or "Roger". > <tl;dr>You (and the movies) are correct. The original abbreviation (which I believe goes back to the days of using Morse code, when abbreviations were almost as critical as they are on Twitter now) was "R" for "received". With voice communications, individual letters are easy to misinterpret, so the practice became to use more bandwidth, not less, by using a predefined word that began with the correct letter. Thus, depending on religious preference, "Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, ..., Roger, ...." or "Able (Abel?), Baker, Charlie, ..., Roger, ..." For "R", the standard choices are "Roger" or "Romeo". As a further tangent, NATO named Soviet submarine classes with a sequence of letters that were expanded using radio codes. Thus Whiskey-class subs get their name from the letter "W" and not the captain's beverage of choice (which would more likely be vodka).
