Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: The Correct Way to Write Your Phone Number Message-ID: Date: 26 Feb 91 02:35:48 GMT Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Mr. News) Organization: Public Health Research Institute, New York City Lines: 23 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 158, Message 4 of 13 Originator: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: hub.eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu > I have always wondered why people write phone numbers with parenthesis > around the area code, as though it were incidental to the entire number, > i.e. (311) 555-2368? Odd you should mention that. I recently was expecting somebody on an Air France flight and called their (AF's) office to see when the flight would be in. A recording of an obviously French voice gave me another number to call. What's odd (at least to my American ears) was that the voice gave the new number as something like "area code 212, telephone number xxx-xxxx", as if the area code was not to be considered part of the phone number, but something extra, or as PAT puts it, incidental. I wonder, was it just a oddity of the person who made the recording, an artifact of a person speaking English as a non-native language and struggling with an idiom, or is it just common usage in France to pronounce phone numbers that way? Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy