TypeTalk: Setting Phone Numbers

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Q. I see so many business cards that contain phone numbers with bad spacing. What is the best way to remedy this?
A. Some people — even a few designers — think that worrying about phone numbers on business cards and other collateral is too picky. But since business cards, letterheads, labels, and other identity and branding materials represent a person or company, they deserve careful attention. And it’s as important for a Fortune 500 Company as it is for the student or job hunter hoping to make a good first impression.
Begin by setting the phone number using the desired style of numeral. Lining figures are the most common numeral style in the majority of Type1 and TrueType text fonts, as well as the default in most OpenType fonts. Let’s start with them, as they usually need the most attention.
If the spacing is too open around the numeral 1 and uneven in general as shown in the example below, the numerals are most likely tabular. That means they’re designed to align vertically in columns but look uneven when set horizontally. For tips on making these kinds of numerals look as good as possible, see “TypeTalk: Make the Most of What You Have.”

If you’re using an OpenType font, it might contain proportional lining figures, so check the OpenType palette and choose proportional lining figures if they’re available. Read “TypeTalk: Find Figure Styles in OpenType Fonts” for details.

If your font doesn’t have proportional lining figures but you’re using InDesign or Illustrator, highlight the numerals and change the kerning to the Optical setting, which will improve the overall spacing.

If you’re still dissatisfied with the spacing, or if your program doesn’t have Optical kerning, use manual kerning to adjust the spacing until you achieve even color and spacing between all the numerals. Be sure to enlarge the type on your screen when kerning to see what you’re doing at a higher resolution.

If you separate numerals with a hyphen (as opposed to a period, for instance), you’ll most likely need to raise the hyphen a bit using the baseline shift. That’s because hyphens are generally centered against a font’s lowercase characters, not caps and lining figures.

If your font contains Proportional Oldstyle figures, as many OpenType fonts do, try them — you probably won’t need to make any spacing adjustment.

I set the above examples in Consul, Gill Sans Pro, Adobe Garamond Pro, and Egyptian Slate Pro.
Love type? Want to know more? Ilene Strizver conducts her acclaimed Gourmet Typography workshops internationally. For more information on attending one or bringing it to your company, organization, or school, go to her site, call The Type Studio at 203-227-5929, or email Ilene at [email protected]. Sign up for her e-newsletter at www.thetypestudio.com.

Ilene Strizver is a noted typographic educator, author, designer and founder of The Type Studio in Westport, Connecticut. Her book, Type Rules! The designer’s guide to professional typography, is now in its 4th edition.
  • Anonymous says:

    Fascinating, but what about your UK readers? We don’t do ours like that!

  • Anonymous says:

    My pet peeve is when business cards are over designed and the contact information either can not be found or is too small to read.
    Misses the point of giving out your contact info, doesn’t it?

  • Anonymous says:

    This was great, and I totall agree about kerning your digits. But can you touch on how to set a stack of phone numbers? Wouldn’t it look better to use the tabular style figures, so they line up (like when you have phone, fax, and cell on 3 separate lines). Often I find (in usually not very great designs) where the contact info is right-justified on the right side of the card. Wouldn’t it look messy if you didn’t use tabular figures? I guess it just comes down to a judgement call.

  • The9th says:

    For a long while now, I’ve used the format NNN.NNN.NNNN, rather than the more traditional (NNN) NNN-NNNN or NNN-NNN-NNNN that you’ve used in these examples.

    Any thoughts on particular formats? (I’ve also used NNN.NNN-NNNN, and various permutations for international format).

    Is there a “fixed style” or “majority” style?

    There seems to be none on Web form input, either. Drives me nutz when the form does not set out an example format and you only find out after sending the form and having it bounce for “improper formatting.” That’s a cardinal sin, IMHO, of user-interface design, especially when it’s so easy to:
    1) add an example format to the form or (even better, I think), to
    2) write the form processing code/script(s) so that ALL formats are recognized.

    (Ditto for “text fields” that don’t either specify char/word count capacity or, even better, have a count-down counter on the text/comment fields–e.g., there are no such prompts on this form.)

  • Anonymous says:

    I’ve always understood–and practiced–that a range of numbers be separated with the en dash as opposed to the hyphen. Is this correct or is a phone number not regarded as a range of number but rather a sequence of numbers? Does it matter?

  • Anonymous says:

    I’ve avoided this problem for several years ever since I switched to doing phone numbers the European way by setting them with periods instead of hyphens.

    Adds a touch of class and is much neater.

  • Anonymous says:

    Great tips. before I read it I thought the discussion was going to be about the punctuation used such as 202/718-0117 or 202/718.0117 or (202) 718- 0117 etc.
    What is the preferred way? It seems that this also has something to do with the country of origin
    Please comment.

  • Strizver says:

    In response to all of your thoughtful your queries,

    – The primary gist of this article was about the spacing of the figures. The style/format you use for phone numbers (hyphens, dashes, parentheses, spaces, etc.) is a question of personal taste and/or your country’s accepted format.

    – Hyphens are correct in phone numbers when that is the chosen style, not en dashes, as a phone number is not a range.

    – As for stacked phone numbers, that is really a question of taste, although I personally prefer to see well-spaced numerals (and text for that matter) over a justified appearance.

    Ilene

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    T H E T Y P E S T U D I O
    Westport, CT
    203.227.5929
    http://www.thetypestudio.com/

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