Re: Convention for Telephone Numbers?

[Graham Dowden <Graham -dot- Dowden -at- NMS -dot- OTC -dot- COM -dot- AU>]

John Lord (jlord -at- livingston -dot- com) wrote:
> Our publications department is trying to come up with a consistent way of
> formatting telephone numbers in the text of manuals, marketing
> ...
> we want a convention that we can use for international as
> well as domestic telephone numbers.

This is not possible since the meaning of prefix numbers dialled
depends on the configuration of local, country and international exchanges,
which may be different between countries.

For example, in AUS and GBR, local country codes start with zero, which
gives a wrong number when dialled from outside the country.

To dial Sydney, Australia:

Dialed from     Type of dialling        Number dialled
-----------     ----------------        ---------------
USA             International           +61 2 9999 8888
AUS, QLD        Country                 02 9999 8888
AUS, Sydney     Local                   9999 8888

> However, one of our engineers who's slightly dyslexic has trouble reading
> telephone numbers that don't show some kind of demarcation between groups.

How do you know that hyphens or any other symbol aren't equally
as incomprehensible for someone with a different reading problem?

If you want precise international numbering scheme conventions, head
for the ITU recommendations
http://www.itu.ch/publications/itu-t/itut.htm
But it would be easier to find something less technical on the web.

Regards,
--
| Graham Dowden, Technical Writer                                    |
|  Email:  dowdeng -at- nms -dot- otc -dot- com -dot- au     Telstra Corporation            |
|    Fax:  +61 2 9339 3818            INMS,  Level 5,  363 Oxford St |
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