Hints From Heloise

Dear Friends: We recently printed an item about the problem of distinguishing various types of phone fax numbers from one another.

The following are a couple of suggestions from our wonderful readers.

Tom Souter of Speedway, Ind., suggests using the lower-case letters between the numbers (example, “f” for fax machine, 317/555 f 1234, “v” for voice mail, 317/555 v 1234 etc.). They stand out better than capital letters when read in a string of numbers. This simple code doesn’t require any additional space to identify a phone number.

E.P. of Rochester, N.Y., says, “As a public relations consultant, I find there’s no sure-fire way to guarantee that a fax number won’t be dialed by mistake. But I’ve used two ideas that might be helpful to your readers.

Put telephone number in bold type.

Put fax number in parentheses.”

I like to print the fax number this way: 210.435(space)64 (space)73. - Heloise