Phone Codes

Instead of more area codes, couldn’t customers have the flexibility of adding a mnemonic at the end of their seven digits: W for work, F for fax, P for pager and C for cellular, for example? This would allow one main phone number to replace as many as four separate numbers. As it is, area codes have strayed from their original design of having the second number always being lower than the first and third numbers (e.g., 213, 508, 617), which was designed to help differentiate the area code from the actual number.

Most people cannot retain sequences of more than seven digits. This mnemonic character approach would help reduce the proliferation of new codes that no longer adhere to the original area code format.

BRUCE M. GALE

Los Angeles