"I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less."
4 May 2005Halfway measuresTelephone numbers that ten years ago were rendered as something like 555-2368 are now occasionally appearing with a dot instead of the dash: 555.2368. (This is even weirder-looking when the area code is included: 405.555.2368.) It's not a problem, though, since you don't dial the punctuation anyway. Now comes a new wrinkle. A local property-management company is rendering in-between addresses in decimal form: they have, for instance, a 1-bedroom apartment, not at 221½ NW 36th Street (not its real street), but at 221.5. This could be troublesome, especially since the Postal Service has what it calls a "standard format" for just about every address to which it delivers, and the standard for this isn't 221.5, or even 221½, but "221 1/2". (Most of your automation systems don't support the ½ character, and the Postal Service loves automation systems: they make When I lived in Charleston, South Carolina, there was a dealer in antiques at the east end of St. Michael's Alley, on the other side of 2. They duly reported their address as 0. The USPS can handle that, at least. Posted at 8:30 PM to City SceneI have been using the dot in phone numbers for years -- and get mighty pissed off if someone questions it, as if the almighty dash is sacred in some way. Sheesh. Periods are easier and faster to type than the dash! Posted by: david at 11:01 PM on 4 May 2005I've always liked the look of the dot instead of the dash. Looks so European. Must be cool if it's European. Reminds me of how my daughter's jeans have a label inside of them that says, "Fait en Etats Unis" (Made in the United States). How cosmopolitan. PS My bigger peeve about the whole phone number thing is that we have not progressed to another word to replace "dial". "Press" or "push" or "punch" don't do it; I'd prefer something else that clearly expresses what you're doing when you are making a call that clearly doesn't have a dial function. Posted by: Vickie at 5:11 AM on 5 May 2005Advertising, at least around here, defaults to "call": "Call 1-800-WE SUCK" or something like that. I'm waiting for a similar verb to handle Web browsing. In the early days, they would say "Point your browser to www.whatever," but that's clumsy and inelegant. (Probably why I used it.) More recent ads tend to say "go to www.whatever," which I suppose is good enough, since most people by now know the means by which they should go. "Click to..." Posted by: McGehee at 1:03 PM on 5 May 2005 |