i’m slightly perturbed by that; it strikes me as rather odd that ’image consultants’ are, well, being consulted to identify a more ’contemporary’ alternative to the dash between numbers. if it’s purely down to readability issues then fair enough - ie deciding what combination is easiest to read from when dialling a phone - but i find numbers separated with dots are not that easy to read quickly.

01234567890

012.3456.7890

012-3456-7890

020 3456 7890

i find the bottom two versions most readable, but the last preferable - guess that’s what i’m used to in the uk. the others seem unnecessarily...superfluous?

I have to agree that numbers separated by a space into groups of three or four are easier to read and memorise, the line about dashes connecting numbers while dots separate seems self-defeating, especially given the example posted above. But as Mbusher says cultural conditioning may have something to do with this. But which European countries use dots to separate numbers? As far as I can remember France, Spain, Germany use groups of numbers either in pairs or threes or fours.
Tim

Quite. I handle MSS from authors all over the place (UK & Europe, US & Canada, Asia, Far East, you name it) and I don’t think I’ve seen many come in the authors’ phone numbers split with dots. They would, indeed, look like an IP address and would be very odd. Most just use spaces, quite a few use hyphens, and a few, nothing at all. I agree that ’no separators’ makes for a hard-to-read number; spaces and hyphens both look fine to me.

Reviving this old thread! I’ve searched as much as I can to find an answer, and this thread is as close as I’ve come.

What do y’all think about using en dashes instead of hyphens in phone numbers?

I’ve used them in the publication I’m working on, but have been told that it is incorrect, and I ought to use hyphens. I’m aware that en-dashed telephone numbers are not the norm in Canada (prolly not anywhere), but are they wrong?

The font I’m using has slightly slanted hyphens which I think look utterly silly in the phone numbers. I’d opt for periods or spaces, but that’s likely too “designy” for their taste (their word, not mine).

So just wondering if there’s some rule that I haven’t found which states that the use of en dashes in phone numbers will cause the sky to fall.

Thanks!
K.

It depends on how the en dash looks in the font. Generally, the en dash is used to indicate a range of numbers, rather than as a separator. In the US the normal format for noting a phone number is

(412)555-5555

but I’ve seen it frequently in recent years printed with dots or spaces replacing both the parentheses and hyphen. You could use en dashes if you want to, I guess, for display so long as it looks good. You just might raise editorial hackles should you try it in text.

As far as I’m concerned, contextuality is everything.
Lay readers don’t react to the qualities of type on a mico-intrinsic level — they don’t notice that stuff — they read in context of the page, of the document.
Editors and design professionals and others with a standards axe to grind will assert their personal or professional preferences, but it’s quite alright for designers to make up their own rules for a document. If the design is forced, well then, it’s too designy — but if it works, it’s brilliant.
After all, how did Ladislav Sutnar ever come up with the idea of using parentheses to format area codes?

I use spaces instead of dashes unless specified otherwise by the client.

It’s also customary here in the US to put the area code (first 3 digits) in parens:

(012) 345 6789

or

(012) 345-6789

but I usually do away with the parens too - again unless the client insists.

En dash is probably too wide. If you want to avoid the slanted hyphen, either substitute a different font for the hyphen or compress the en dash glyph to make it narrower.

I agree that the en-dash is probably too wide, and will call too much attention to itself.

With regard to the parens for area codes, I suspect it is going away as more and more places require you to dial all 10 numbers, even locally.

OK. Thanks for the feedback. We’re also in the process of changing how we deal with area codes since it is now required when dialling locally. Some want a dash there, too: 123-234-5678

Maybe I’ll try the dots, or playing around with another hyphen.

Thanks!