I was designing a wedding invitation for a client that came into the shop today – we sat down and pulled all of her information together, sorting out what needed to go on the invitations and such. Anyway, after I was looking at all of the information she had written down, something caught my eye. She had phone numbers written like this:

• (xxx) xxx-xxxx
• 1(8xx) xxx-xxxx
• 1(8xx) xxx-xxxx
• (xxx) xxx-xxxx

Now, why-oh-why would you only include the country code with toll-free numbers?

The funny thing is that I’ve seen this numerous times before. People, in the general sense, seem to want to add that 1 before an 800 number, but do not find it necessary before any other telephone number.

Why does this happen? I blame infomercials. Just call 1-800-xxx-xxxx, that’s 1-800-xxx-xxxx, and don’t forget to call 1-800-xxx-xxxx!