Standards are implemented in many places for good reason. They prevent confusion and mistakes and consequently can prevent wasted time and money.
Here I’m going to explain two standards we use at Lorica for contact information.
- Capitalisation of surnames – This isn’t a documented standard but in today’s international market place where the variety of names we have to deal with is always increasing it allows us to easily identify and therefore correctly address other people. It also means picking out references to people in long documents and emails is easier.
- E164 telephone number format – Here telephone numbers are always specified in full with the international code at the beginning prefixed by a “+” sign followed by the number missing the internal dial prefix digit (often a “0” in the UK)
The “(0)” often shown is incorrect. If you included this when dialling on nearly any system you’d get an error; it’s for human consumption and just prevents automation when that’s what we should all be aiming for. A correctly formatted e164 number should be acceptable for dialling in any system. Try dialling a full number including the “+” on your mobile phone and it should work, even if you’re abroad. J