brian hefele's untidy spaceI have applied for hundreds of jobs in the past few months. One thing that I have noticed is that (almost) all the web software related to job hunting and application feels ancient and clumsy in a web which generally tends toward either being clean, quick, and stable or flashy, but functional. The other prime example of this sort of 'old web' mentality is in forum software - somebody needs to step up and design the WordPress of forum software so that I don't feel like I'm hanging out on Geocities. Part of the problem with many of the job applications are their forms which simply don't provide good usability. A common application doesn't show the 'State' dropdown until you've chosen your country. This means that you can't tab from country to state, because state doesn't exist at the moment of tabbing. So you enter country, tab to ZIP (or something), shift-tab up to state, and then tab around a little more to get back in the game. Another common annoyance is the form that requires your phone number in a specific format.
This is a similar problem to that of not stripping punctuation from numbers, a task trivial for code to handle on the back end. Yet many websites still insist we don't hyphenate our credit card numbers, don't put any punctuation in our phone numbers, etc. No separators in a long string of digits is not the best as far as readability (and therefore entry) is concerned. The problem gets a little stranger when they instead force a specific method upon their users. Again, stripping the formatting and then reformatting it however you wish should be trivial to code, let the users enter it in a way that befits them. But, all this is just segue into my real point - the (301) 555-0505 format.
To me, (301) 555-0505 feels rather archaic. This is all a matter of style, but here's how I see things. The parenthetical area code suggests that we have an option. When I was growing up in a relatively small town, the area code was an option. Local calls took only seven digits, the area code only necessary for long distance. When our area got additional area codes, all ten digits became necessary. In other areas of our life, we use parentheses to show something supplemental, something optional, something alternative. (S)he told me that the cat (and possibly the dog) would be entering the house(s). The parenthetical punctuation is related to the concept of parenthesis in rhetoric - that which is grammatically disconnected from that which it surrounds.
So, that's why I'm not too keen on (301). 301-555-0505 would be alright, but I'm still far more partial to dots, 301.555.0505. I've seen it argued elsewhere that we should use dots because we live in the age of the internet, a land where dots are everywhere, and we need more dots! I think this is bunk, but I do have a reason to support the use of dots in the internet age. In computing, dots tend to signify hierarchy, drilling down at every divide. Notes.txt drills down from right to left - the file is a text file, more specifically it is called 'Notes.' DNS works the same way - brhefele.brainaxle.com is part of the broad commerce TLD, more specifically, it's part of the brainaxle group of sites, and even more specifically it's this particular blog. The reverse DNS convention used by Java and Apple UTIs drill down from left to right - com.apple.quicktime-movie is part of the broad commercial scope, more specifically it belongs to Apple, and most specifically it is a Quicktime Movie.
So, to this end, phone numbers separated by dots drill down left to right. Area code to prefix to individual. Extensions exist all the way to the right, but delimiting this with a dot could prove confusing (I typically prefer a single lowercase 'x'). Prefixing the number with the broader scope of country code is typically done with a '+,' though for some reason omitting the plus sign and using a dot in between seems less jarring than switching over the extension. I wouldn't mind a day where we exclusively use dots, however. Again, this is all a matter of personal style. There exists a standard, E.123, which generally follows (301) 555 0505, allowing for 'an agreed upon standard' to replace the spaces. I doubt the parentheses are going away any time soon. Doesn't mean that I don't hate looking at them, however.