Anglo Digits

One of the things that continues to baffle me is the complete lack of consistency in the clustering and pronunciation (not really the right word, but more how they are cluster when being audible relayed) of phone numbers.

Believe it or not, but just this morning I had to do a check to see how many digits are in an English phone number. The answer, surprisingly enough, is 10, just like American numbers. However, the English make it eternally difficult for people like me to remember phone numbers by displaying them in essentially any such way. Here at work I'm working on organizing some interviews with some local authorities, and as part of this list I have copied and pasted in the phone numbers of the people attending the meetings as listed in their emails, and then I have my own phone number as listed in my emails. This small combo of phone numbers results in three different clusterings of digits, as follows:

012 3456 7890
0123 456 7890
01234 567890

You also often see phone numbers simpled denoted as 01234567890.

At this point I should probably add that all phone numbers start with a zero, as technically you find long distance calls in the US starting with a 1.

English phone numbers never have dashes, implying how to easily cluster them together. The other day when I made an appointment for a haircut, I clustered my phone number in typical American fashion (0123-456-7890), only to have it repeated back to me in a totally different way (01234-567-890), and I was like, yeah, I think that is my number. What all this inconsistency has made me realize is how much I rely on the 'beat', so to speak, of a phone number to help me remember it. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what my cell phone number is, and I have to make sure I write it down to have on hand when I make an appointment by phone.

Here are some additional points on what makes up an English phone number...
Like with American numbers, the beginning technically forms an area code. A full area code is four digits, for example, Southampton numbers start with 02380. As can be expected, cities are often too large to be able to encompass everyone with a four-digit area code. Unlike in the US, where they would then just assume another random area code, they will keep the first three digits and then the 4th digit will come to denote a certain area within the city. For example, Manchester phone numbers start with 0161.

Being especially big and massive, London can't even cope with a three-digit area code. A London phone number is instead simply denoted as starting with 020. Central London is generally 0207, but then when you get down to Croydon or something similar, you move over to 0208.

Phone numbers get even more specific than that, my home phone number shares something like 6 digits with the phone number of some of the local businesses. Much like an English post code, it seems my phone number ropes me into a much smaller area than its American counterpart (FYI, a full English post code only applies to a few houses on a particular street).

The place where this breaks down is cell phones. Cell phone numbers in the UK start with 07, and from there on out it seems the possibilities are expanding as the number of cell phones increases. Typically a cell phone would start with 0786, 0787, or 0788. How these things get decided, I don't really know. And of course, I again must admit that I don't even know how mine starts...