In the past several years many designers have take to present phone numbers in a format with dots. For example: 206.555.1212. But I have no idea why they do this. It is difficult to recognize as a phone number. This dotted format - at quick glance - looks more like an IP address than a telephone number. So I ask, which group of numbers below is more easily recognized as a phone number to you?

(206) 850-9798
206-850-9798
206.850.9798

I’d argue day and night that (206) 555-1212 is the easiest to recognize format.

Aside from human recognition, some applications (like Microsoft Outlook 2003) won’t recognize 206.555.1212 as a phone number. This led me to check in with the Microformats folks to see if they had a specification or a standard format for phone numbers. Unfortunately, their list of Microformats doesn’t turn up anything for phone numbers. vCards are as close as they get.

Looking past function for a moment consider the aesthetics of the three options above. The (206) 555-1212 format is much more beautiful and elegant. It has subtle curves in the parenthesis, more white space overall and a clear call to locality (that is, separating the area code from the local number).

Do you feel as strongly about using 206.850.9798 as I do about using (206) 555-1212? Tell me why in the comments below. If we end up getting any comments on this (especially from non-American viewers who have different phone number formats) then we’ll have to expand the discussion to include international telephone number formats.