How to Write Phone Numbers and Addresses - American Culture

Learn how Americans write phone numbers and address numbers. Learn about 800 numbers and zip codes or postal codes.

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Starting times for sections of the video:

00:01 Phone Numbers
03:15 Addresses


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TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. I’m Denise. Thank you for watching my video. Today I’m going to talk about writing numbers in phone numbers and addresses. I’ll start here with phone numbers. Our phone numbers, a basic phone number is seven digits long, so one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. But normally we have an additional three digits in the front. These three digits are called the area code. Traditional ways of writing phone numbers are really these two ways. Mostly this, in my opinion, is the most common or the most traditional. The area code is in parentheses. Then we write the seven-digit number and the two portions here are separated with a hyphen. Some people, though, choose not to use the parentheses and instead they use a hyphen in both places here to separate the three parts of the phone number. In recent years, however, some people have stopped using hyphens altogether and instead they use a period here and a period here, so they use periods to the separate different parts of the phone number. You can use whichever method you prefer. You’ll probably still see more of these two, but as I said this is becoming more and more common. Sometimes you will also see the number one before the other ten digits. This number one is the country code for the United States and also for Canada. So if you’re in the United States and you’re dialing a U.S. number, you won’t need the number one, but if you’re dialing a Canadian number you will need it. This number has 800 in the area code position. We call it an 800 number. Most 800 numbers and also numbers with 877 and 888 in the area code position are usually free numbers. We normally do not have to pay for those numbers, so if you’re on a phone plan where you have to pay for each phone number that you call, you will not normally have to pay if the first three digits of the number are any of these three. Okay? Normally, though, this is for the area code. The area code represents the city that you’re calling, so here are two examples. An area code of 312 represents Chicago, is used for Chicago numbers, and 212 is one of the area codes for New York City. Some large cities like New York City may have several area codes. Nowadays, though, as people move all over and they carry their cell phones with them, their cell phone number might have an area code for let’s say New York City or for Chicago but that person may no longer be there. They may be in a different state or a different city. So just because the area code says New York does not mean you’re calling New York. In the past, however, that’s what those numbers meant. Let me now talk a little bit about numbers in addresses.

When we write addresses, we don’t use punctuation with the number. In another video, I talked about the need for using a comma in large numbers. Well, ...