At Indiana University
What do you think of dots in phone numbers?
CELmates:
What follows is my cover note to my colleagues here at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, followed by comments from CELmates who responded before yesterday morning (9/12/01)
Colleagues:
I offer below a series of comments on the use of dots in phone numbers that I solicited from the 1,000+ members of the Copyediting-L Listserve e-mail discussion group to which I belong. The group has been very helpful to me and us for the more than five years that I have been a subscriber. I have made no effort to edit them (other than to remove extraneous material) or to promote my bias against the use of dots in phone numbers. In fact, you will note that there are a few comments from those who favor the use of dots in phone numbers. I have included ALL responses.
FYI, the group is made up of copyeditors, writers (of all sorts of material from books to marketing and advertising matter) and technical writers worldwide, representing just about every English-speaking country and some where English is not the dominant language.
I send these comments only for your information. I hope that if we do decide to make a change in the way the institution styles phone numbers we will do it in a broad-policy manner with the concurrence of all of us who are involved in communicating the museum's messages. We should represent ourselves in print consistently, and any changes should be made only after serious consideration is given to any proposed change.
Don Dale
When I ask people why they want to punctuate phone numbers that way, they say it's the way Europe does it. Take a look at any number of Web sites in Europe. Germany separates clusters of digits with spaces, and it does not even seem to be consistent in why it breaks them where it does, other than being able to remember "twenty-three, forty-five, nine-ninety-2" as chunks. Russia uses hyphens (e.g. 725-65-72) according to http://www.infoservices.com/moscow/30.htm) France seems to be using hyphens (e.g. 01-45-62-39-94) according to http://www.anamericaninparis.com/guide.html#Jacquemart Poland is more like the German model (e.g.(+48 22) 657 80 11) according to http://gopoland.com/wheretogo/warsaw/hotels/ Spain seems to follow the US model (e.g. 91/369-1617) according to http://www.fodors.com/partners/expedia/mgresults.cfm?section_list=ove,sig,d in,lod,nig,sho,tra&destination=madrid@95&cur_section=din I think it is just something toney that a designer in The Big Apple came up with (like a hair ball) and it caught on. Some companies for which I write copy (brochures, and occasional advertorial), insist that I use the dots. They pay the bill, so I comply. However, the major publishing companies for whom I edit do not use dots in the manuscripts or articles they send me. (One uses area code/555-5555; the others use all hyphens). Go figure. I *hate* the dots in phone numbers. They are not the conventional markers in phone numbers; therefore, they are stumbling blocks. There's enough to figure out without adding stumbling blocks to something as straightforward as a phone number. Periods are unreadable, pretentious, ambiguous, and downright annoying. I like to think it's a trend and it too shall pass. Equally annoying are slashes where hyphens should be: 222/2222. Looks like a ratio or a fraction and is unreadable as a phone number. Perhaps hyphens look stodgy to some people, and if we're showing our age, well, I've always believed that with age comes wisdom--at least about some things. It looks trendy and is harder to read. I toyed with using this format at work a couple of years ago, and decided against it. My company develops cutting-edge software, so we do follow some hot trends in our doc (even email without the hyphen), but not this one. For ad copy, I'd register only a mild objection. Perhaps your client is more interested in projecting an image of hipness than in presenting a very readable phone number. Actually, hipness might be in ill repute these days (shades of dot-coms past). I object too -- strenuously. I think phone numbers with dots are too hard to read and can be confused too easily with other kinds of numbers. Phone numbers are too important to be "designed." They must be easily legible by all readers of all ages. I hate it. I've had a few discussions about this one in my past job -- I HATE them. Yes, I think they're just used for trendiness and hipness (like 24/7 -- another term I hate). If the dots were clearer than hyphens, I'd use them, but they're not. You can hardly see the space between the sections of numbers and it makes the numbers more difficult to read, not easier. And since our job is clarity, I refuse to be a lemming and use those dots. It's pointlessly trendy. Are they using periods for the dots, or are they at least going with a nice centered dot? If the latter, I probably could accept it as looking enough like hyphens to be obvious to most people. Periods, though, get the big thumbs-down. Putting dots in telephone numbers is confusing and unnecessary. If you don't want hyphens, leave spaces. If you put dots in telephone numbers they look like Internet addresses or IP numbers or something similar -- so why do it? It still looks affected, fit only for hairdressers, Internet MLM hucksters, and recent design-school grads. The style is fine if the piece is intended only for people 25 and younger, whose education consists primarily of exposure to VH-1. If you want people to respond to your print pieces, make them easy for audience members to read. Don't mess with time-honored conventions of punctuation for the sake of fashion. Of course, I could be wrong -- but I'm not. This style looks SILLY. I think that so long as the numbers are clearly separated it doesn't matter much whether you use a dot or a dash (a French friend would write it in spaces with dots between each two numbers: 22.22.22.22.2 - and looks like a web address, but she's been doing it for twenty years...) but that consistency is more important than being stylish. I love the dots, and have been using them for about five year (area code too). They're clean and uncluttered. When I started using dots (because I thought it "looked neat") some time ago, I had a number of problems of people thinking it was a Web address. I was also told that the dots were "more European", so I thought I was being "international". However, since then, I've discovered that it's not "more international" and it does look funny. It looks "too arty". I no longer like it and I discourage it. I don't understand why we should change something that was working so well! Count me among those who hate the "dots." I just don't think they communicate well. We recently had a group prepare a special business card for doing business overseas and they insisted on dots in the phone numbers because "that is how foreigners are used to seeing telephone numbers". I had to bite my tongue. I wanted to point out that they while they are used to seeing their own numbers with dots, they are used to seeing American numbers with dashes. I also wanted to say that I don't see Europeans putting dashes in their numbers to accommodate what we are used to seeing. We once had someone here (now thankfully long gone) who insisted on "Britishizing" spelling for overseas audiences -- so color would be colour, etc. Of course, she missed the point that spelling is just one way the British use language differently from us and that it could be viewed not as accommodating, but as condescending. I view the whole dots thing in the same light. I hate dots in phone numbers because they generally are illegible. It may have a certain "look and feel" (and how much do I hate that phrase?) but YOU CAN'T READ THE #$#@*&)%$&$# THING. Yes, I'm shouting. My own business cards have dots. I objected but lost that debate. I usually resort to the argument: No one ever complained that something was too damned clear.
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