Phone Lex

When it comes to telephones, a lot has changed since the days of “one-ringy-dingy, two-ringy-dingy." It used to be that we had a phone – okay, some of us had a princess phone – a phone number and that was that. Today? Well, you know. Not only are we talking on our phones constantly, we’re also talking about our phones, referencing phone numbers from New York to New Delhi, and encouraging people to call toll-free numbers, among many other phone-related things. As new technologies have been introduced, so, too, have the ways in which we refer to them in our writing. Cell phone is two words. And cell has two Ls. It would be fun if more than one BlackBerry could properly be BlackBerries, but it’s not. It’s BlackBerrys. While it’s iPhone, it’s IPhone if it starts a sentence. Hot line is two words, too. Smartphone is one word and lowercase unless it starts a sentence as it does here. The initialism for Voice over Internet Protocol is VoIP, styled just like that. Bluetooth is a proper noun and always capitalized. Toll free is two words, hyphenated when used as a modifier (a toll-free number, but you can dial toll free). While we’re on the subject of toll-free numbers, you should not add a 1 before the number, as in 1-800-555-1212, since, as the Washington Post’s copy desk chief Bill Walsh wrote in his masterpiece, Lapsing Into a Comma, “there’s no need to … belabor the fact that everybody, and not just most people, has to add a 1 at the beginning.” In the United States, we use hyphens in phone numbers – call me at 312-222-3333 – and not periods, no matter how soigné you think it may look. SMS stands for short message service but no one knows that so it’s better to just write SMS or “text message.” When referencing phone numbers for a global audience, from the United States include 011, which indicates a number outside North America; a country code; in some cases a regional, city or area code; and, finally, the local phone number itself. A list of country codes can be found here. But even better, at this site you choose the country from which the call is originating, the country it’s going to, and in return you get the exact numbers you need to use to precede the local number. For instance, if I want to call a colleague in my company’s office in Paris, France, I’d choose the U.S. and Paris, and it tells me I need to write 011 33 1 and then the local number. Voila!

Comments

[Ole]

Since you do touch on the international sphere, a cell phone in many other places is a mobile phone. Or even a 'handy' (in Germany only, but still) :)

Enjoyable column!

[Julie]

I thought of this post today when @APStylebook posted about this very subject! In a correction of an earlier tweet, @APStylebook stated that smart phone is two words. Here's the link: http://twitter.com/APStylebook/status/5403870193.

It's so interesting to see everyone's take on writing style!

[Erik]

Regarding capitalization of "iPhone," it seems to me that the "i" should remain as a lowercase letter even if the word starts a sentence. It is the proper name of the product, after all.

[Dan]

Thanks for your comment, Erik. But iPhone is definitely uppercase when starting a sentence, as is every word in the English language no matter how an individual or company styles its name. A company can choose to style a brand name however it chooses - and that's what Apple does with iPhone - but the rules of grammar are bigger than any one brand or marketing plan.

[Eric C]

Question. You write that we should only use hyphens--and I agree-- but what about parenthesis around the first trio of digits, ie (xxx) xxx-xxxx.

I like this look better.

[Eric C]

I don't think my comment went through earlier, but is it okay to write "(xxx) xxx-xxxx" for phone numbers? This is how I usually do it.

[mighty red pen]

As an editor, I've always followed the rule that the need to capitalize the first word of the sentence trumps brand names like iPod and eBay. However, an even better way to handle it (in my experience) is often to rewrite the sentence to avoid this conundrum.

[Dan]

Hi, Eric. Sorry for this tardy response! More than anything, I'm a proponent of consistency. So while I prefer hyphens in phone numbers, if you prefer italics around area codes and are consistent about it, it's probably fine. (Though I admit I think using periods is pretentious.)

[Jennifer]

Dan -- interesting that CP/AP has adopted Blackberrys, since BlackBerry brand guidelines state the plural should always be BlackBerry smartphones (smartphone one word).