Bring back Biff
The best advice I heard recently was to "name your numbers" to avoid any misconception, i.e. the prefix - heading, altitude, level, callsign etc before any number. As long as the number has a name then the word 'to' cannot be misconstrued. Also consider that 'descend 10 000 feet' without the prefix 'altitude' can either mean descend a total of 10 000 feet or descend to the altitude of 10 000 feet. In reality, someone at FL280 given the instruction to descend 10 000 feet could descend to FL180??