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I read somewhere (can't cite the source), that the tugboat captain was asked if he was ready, and replied "almost ready" and that the 'almost' wasn't heard.

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Jeez, just say "no" dude

A few years ago, I erroneously started a process on an unclean dataset, thinking it had been cleaned. This caused messages to be delivered to customers, asking them to take action, when in fact no action should have been taken on their part.

The cause? In a status update, the person cleaning the dataset said that she was "ready to begin". I interpreted that as "the processing process is ready to begin", not "the cleaning process is ready to begin".

When stakes are high, clear communication helps us all - even when whatever's happening is an SOP that you run every day.

This is why air traffic control sounds so repetitive and specific - even going so far as to say “niner” so it doesn’t sound like “no” in German.

Aviation uses niner instead of nine to avoid confusion with five which is also one syllable and contains the long-I vowel sound. The rest of the English numbers have distinct vowels and/or different numbers of syllables. If all you picked up over a weak radio transmission was the vowel sounds, you could still tell what number was spoken.

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