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Layout of Telephone Numbers
Recommendations for the printing of national and international forms of telephone numbers on letterheads bills, business cards, etc are set out in the ITU-T Recommendation E.123 Notation for national and international telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and Web addresses.
The reader is referred to the Recommendation for the detail but the main points are:
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the national and international forms of a telephone number should be shown separately, and labelled appropriately
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the national number should be shown vertically above the international number, with corresponding digits lining-up
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the international prefix symbol, +, should prefix all representations of an international telephone number
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the parentheses symbol, ( ), should be used to indicate digits that are not always dialled in a national number. This symbol should not be used in the international form of the number
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spaces should be used to group digits although the use of other symbols, such as a hyphen, is permissible in the national form of a number. Spaces only should be used in the international form.
Examples for two geographic UK telephone numbers and two non-geographic UK numbers are provided here:
| Telephone | National | (020) 7946 0946 |
| International | +44 20 7946 0946 | |
| Telephone | National | (01632) 960960 |
| International | +44 1632 960960 | |
| Telephone | National | 07700 900900 |
| International | +44 7700 900900 | |
| Telephone | National | 03069 990990 |
| International | +44 3069 990990 |
It follows that the following commonly seen representations of UK telephone numbers...
+44 (0) 1632 960960
+44 (01632) 960960
...do not align with the Recommendation.
Page updated 06/08/2013