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With the natural uptick in forum views that happens around now, i'm posting this so as to get a wider range of responses, etc.
I think a lot about phone numbers. Phone systems have always fascinated me since I was little, but also the social and linguistic context of how phone numbers are a part of our lives also is a cool topic, at least for me. Growing up through the era of area code splitting (and the howls and cries from folk who were affected by that) or learning the story of Cheshire Catalyst and the 321- area code down around the NASA Cape in Florida, etc. These are all very cool bits of culture to me.
My question today isn't so much aesthetic or cultural, however. It is decidedly technological. Here it is...
People format their phone numbers in a myriad of ways. For their own reasons of taste, some people use hyphens while others use periods. Some people insist on putting area codes in parenthesis while others feel that this is arcane and say "all US numbers are ten digits!" I've even seen slapdash spacing, inconsistent useage of country codes, etc. In this vein, I ask: What do you think is the best way to format a telephone phone number on a business card, email signature, etc. in order to make it understandable by the maximum range of both persons and technological systems?
It's that second part that interests me the most. Modern smart phones, email clients, etc. will often do their best to pull out relevant strings from messages and turn them into links or otherwise enable them for direct clicking if a user wants to save a number, dial a number, etc.
Are some types of formatting easier for more platforms to understand? Are there some ways of formatting a number that will cause problems? Most of this question is specific to US-numbers... but I'd also be interested if folk would comment on ways to format saved phone numbers so that they will have the best chance of dialing properly no matter where you are in the world.
I think a lot about phone numbers. Phone systems have always fascinated me since I was little, but also the social and linguistic context of how phone numbers are a part of our lives also is a cool topic, at least for me. Growing up through the era of area code splitting (and the howls and cries from folk who were affected by that) or learning the story of Cheshire Catalyst and the 321- area code down around the NASA Cape in Florida, etc. These are all very cool bits of culture to me.
My question today isn't so much aesthetic or cultural, however. It is decidedly technological. Here it is...
People format their phone numbers in a myriad of ways. For their own reasons of taste, some people use hyphens while others use periods. Some people insist on putting area codes in parenthesis while others feel that this is arcane and say "all US numbers are ten digits!" I've even seen slapdash spacing, inconsistent useage of country codes, etc. In this vein, I ask: What do you think is the best way to format a telephone phone number on a business card, email signature, etc. in order to make it understandable by the maximum range of both persons and technological systems?
It's that second part that interests me the most. Modern smart phones, email clients, etc. will often do their best to pull out relevant strings from messages and turn them into links or otherwise enable them for direct clicking if a user wants to save a number, dial a number, etc.
Are some types of formatting easier for more platforms to understand? Are there some ways of formatting a number that will cause problems? Most of this question is specific to US-numbers... but I'd also be interested if folk would comment on ways to format saved phone numbers so that they will have the best chance of dialing properly no matter where you are in the world.
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