a question for americans??

Question

This is pretty stupid but ive always wondered in advertisements for example there is a number but at the end of it there is letters too....how can you ring a number with a word in it?? its confused me for so long!! for example 08796 977 WORK!!

Answer 1

Telephones have letters coded over the numbers to facilitate remembering "addresses":

2: ABC
3: DEF
4: GHI
5: JKL
6: MNO
7: PQRS
8:TUV
9: WXYZ
1 is nothing, 0 is operator.

So WORK is 9-6-7-5

Answer 2

newcitykity and ellen are correct. Originally when the phone system was put in place, the letters were used to identify the city and was placed at the beginning of the number. The famous Glenn Miller song Pennsylvania 6-5000 illustrates this. This was before area codes, and they only used the first two letters of the word; so that becomes PE6-5000 which would have been 736-5000.

Answer 3

usually it would be formated as follws: 866 977 WORK. The letters correspond to the numbers on the phone. Each phone has letters labeled on it, for numbers 2 through 9. You just type the approriate number for each letter. i.e. WORK would be 9675. Advertisers do it to make there number easy to remember.

Answer 4

The letters if you would check them by looking at your phone, are the digits you punch for the call. The numbers for this call would be 08796977(work=9676) anothe example is 716 593 7407=shop. Some companies use all letters for their phone number,so instead of looking at the numbers you have to look for the letters.

Answer 5

Each letter on your telephone corresponds to a number, or, you may find letters above each number. WORK is 9675. Can you figure it out now?