I got pretty good at memorising alpha bravo charlie[1] so I just jump straight into that, and for characters like #, * and ! I try and use the word I know is mo

I got pretty good at memorising alpha bravo charlie[1] so I just jump straight into that, and for characters like #, * and ! I try and use the word I know is most common, e.g. in english "pound", "star" and "exclamation mark". "hash" and "bang" get me what I suppose are the equivalent of blank looks.. So I have nicely complex passwords generated by Keepass and the staff usually don't think anything of it once I mention I work in "computers". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet