Letters on the phone dial
Look at your phone carefully, if you are using a traditional telephone like a corded or cordless phone, you will see tiny little letters above each of the numbers. These letters tell you what key to press for each letter. On a cell phone, usually the letters are only above the keys on the outside phone keypad, not the inner keypad (when you have a phone with multiple keypads.
For instance, on the phone in front of me, the number two has the letters a,b,c by it; the number three has the letters d,e,f; the number four has the letters g,h,i; the number five has the letters j,k,l; the number six has the letters m,n,o; the number seven has the letters p,q,r,s; the number eight has the letters t,u,v; the number nine has the letters w,x,y, and z. So to dial the phone number that you mentioned on the phone in front of me, you would dial 123-456-5 (for the L) 4 (for the I, 6 (for the O), and 6 for the (N). So the complete number would be 123-456-5466.
There was concern that people would have difficulty remembering phone numbers when they became longer than four or five digits. So each digit from 2 to 9 was assigned three letters (see the photo accompanying this article). This used 24 of the 26 letters of the alphabet with Q and Z omitted. Today Q and Z are often assigned to numbers 7 (PQRS) and 9 (WXYZ) respectively.
When the 10-digit phone numbers we know today arrived, each number had an area code (3 digits), an exchange (3 digits) and a number (4 digits). The exchange consisted of two letters corresponding to the area where the exchange resided, and one digit. The purpose for the letters was to help people remember the number based on the location. Today with computerized phones there are contact lists so you don't have to remember numbers. Many companies use the letters in a different way - using letters instead of numbers to spell one or more words, which makes it easy for people to remember their number.
Look at your phone carefully, if you are using a traditional telephone like a corded or cordless phone, you will see tiny little letters above each of the numbers. These letters tell you what key to press for each letter. On a cell phone, usually the letters are only above the keys on the outside phone keypad, not the inner keypad (when you have a phone with multiple keypads.
For instance, on the phone in front of me, the number two has the letters a,b,c by it; the number three has the letters d,e,f; the number four has the letters g,h,i; the number five has the letters j,k,l; the number six has the letters m,n,o; the number seven has the letters p,q,r,s; the number eight has the letters t,u,v; the number nine has the letters w,x,y, and z. So to dial the phone number that you mentioned on the phone in front of me, you would dial 123-456-5 (for the L) 4 (for the I, 6 (for the O), and 6 for the (N). So the complete number would be 123-456-5466.
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