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John and Taffy,
I don't have an answer to your formatting question--I hope we hear
from internationally-savvy folks on that--but can tell you from
experience a couple of things about phone numbers that do *not* work
globally:
- all countries do not have letters on the phone pad or dial, so
don't give a number such as x-xxx-hot-line, at least without providing
its numeric equivalent
- toll-free numbers (800-xxx-xxxx) do not work around the world, so
if you use them, qualify from where they do work and provide
alternative numbers for where they don't
Regards,
Carol Kime
ckime -at- peerlogic -dot- com
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Convention for Telephone Numbers?
Author: John Lord <jlord -at- LIVINGSTON -dot- COM> at email_gw
Date: 9/9/97 10:19 AM
Our senior editor (Taffy Everts - mailto:taffy -at- livingston -dot- com) would be
very grateful for some help and advice on this topic from both the national
and international list members.
Our publications department is trying to come up with a consistent way of
formatting telephone numbers in the text of manuals, marketing
communications, and so on. We'd like to avoid the use of parentheses, if
possible, and we want a convention that we can use for international as
well as domestic telephone numbers.
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
However, one of our engineers who's slightly dyslexic has trouble reading
telephone numbers that don't show some kind of demarcation between groups.
We're not sure that he's typical of dyslexics because he's our only source
of information. Hyphens work for him, he says:
+44-1344-200000
+1-510-555-1212
800-555-1212
Periods are another possibility:
+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!
------------------------------------------------------------
John Lord Manager of Technical Publications mailto:jlord -at- livingston -dot- com Livingston Enterprises, Inc. http://www.livingston.com Pleasanton, California.
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