questions i don't have the answers to...

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[this is good]
Yeah, it's totally a "designed" thing to do. I started doing it when my (talented and hipster) graphic designer friend started doing it. Shameless of me, really, but I figured that if he thought it was cool, so did I (and I did -- I find it cleaner aesthetically).
When I was a kid, our phone numbers all started with letters: KI5-2004. I remember when we had to change to all numbers. There was some discussion about just how many digits a person could remember correctly. It was decided that they remember more numbers if you grouped them, ***-**** In 1981 when we all lived in Bozeman, MT, we could call people within the town by just dialing 4 numbers. Ah, the good old days....
I know places in Europe where 4 digit phone numbers are still good. I think it's a bit of a European thing, actually, to replace dashes and commas with periods -- it's definitely the mode in German. I don't like how my phone number ends up resembling an IP address, though... hmm.

there's something unbelievably cool about people in those old movies picking up the huge clunky receivers and saying "operator, give me seymour 1240!" that was great and what an easy way to remember numbers. i suppose the letters were the shortened version of this practice.

because i don't use the phone much, i can NEVER remember phone numbers and have to keep my phone book with me at all times...though i do remember before that i could remember lots of numbers in my head. conversely, i can often remember people's email addresses...

i've actually been doing that in a lot in my design work (online and print) for the past few years. not many people did it at first, though. so maybe in the past year or two, it's been more common?

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mcco12

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mcco12
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