public static String word2num(String word) {

		// convert word to upper case
		String _word = word.trim().toUpperCase();

		// for each letter, convert to number
		StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
		String _num = "";
		for (int i = 0; i < _word.length(); i++) {
			_num = getNumberEncoding(_word.substring(i, i + 1));
			sb.append(_num);
		}

		return sb.toString();
	}