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Subject:Convention for Telephone Numbers? From:"Walter L. Bazzini" <bazzini -at- COMPUSERVE -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 11 Sep 1997 07:52:24 -0400
I noticed the banter between Peter Ring and John Lord regarding telephone
number formatting:
>> We initially decided to use spaces between the groups of numbers because
>> European telephone numbers seem to do so:
>>
> >+44 1344 200000
> >+1 510 555 1212
> >800 555 1212
> >...
> >I'm not sure whether European numbers are ever shown separated by
hyphens
> >or periods instead of spaces---I'm checking with someone in Europe about
> >this. I don't know about Asian, African, Middle Eastern, Pacific, or
Latin
> >American telephone numbering conventions.
>>
> >Has anyone determined a convention that works for all kinds of readers
of
> >all kinds of telephone numbers? Any information on this subject would be
> >helpful!
>There are no official standard (except for the "+"), but to my
>experience this format will be properly understood by most people as
>it is a growing de-facto standard:
>+<country code>-<area code excl. area code prefix>-<rest of the
>tel. number>...
According to the _Wired Style_ gospel, the "correct" way to set phone
numbers is:
+[country code] (areacode) [number] where "+" stands in for the local
number for interntional access, e. g., "011" in the United States. The
number is organized according to convention, with spaces rather than
punctuation used except for parenthesis enclosing the city or area code.
Thus, New York City information would read:
+1 (212) 555 1212
This is fine if you do in fact anticipate international callers, or a crowd
who frequently makes international calls. But if your target is mostly
domestic -- at least U. S. domestic -- I've found it leads to nothing but
confusion: "What's up with the plus sign?" or "Who doesn't know you need a
'1' for long distance?" or "Hope you didn't pay for these cards; they left
out the hyphen in your phone number." [In the U. S., we dial "1" for calls
outside the local area, and "convention" is "555-1212" -- a three digit
prefix plus a four digit station, separated by a hyphen.]
At the risk of not being on the cutting edge, I've taken to setting phone
numbers in any documents destined to never leave these shores in the local
style -- (212) 555-1212. Should they find their way across the border, I
expect that most phone books, just like ours, come with instructions for
international dialing as well as a list of country codes.
--Walter Bazzini
bazzini -at- compuserve -dot- com
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