Hyphens, Numbers and Saying It Over the Phone

Written and spoken are different problems

A domain is chosen by looking at it: does it read well, is it short, is it available.

Then it spends its life being said out loud, on the phone, at a counter, across a driveway, and on a voicemail.

For a trades business or anybody who answers calls, the spoken form is used more often than the written one, and it is never tested before the name is bought.

Which is how a business ends up spelling its own address four times a day, forever.

The test

One exercise, five minutes, before you register anything.

Say the domain once, at normal speed, to somebody who has never seen it, as you would on the phone.

Have them type what they heard, without asking a question.

If they get it right, it passes. If they hesitate, ask you to repeat it, or type something different, it does not.

Do it with three people, because one person mishearing is chance and three people diverging is the name.

That is a better decision procedure than any amount of looking at it on a screen.

What fails the test

• Hyphens, which have to be said explicitly.
• Numbers, which may be digits or words.
• Doubled letters at a word boundary.
• Words with two spellings, such as colour or centre.
• Anything abbreviated or run together ambiguously.
• Unusual extensions people do not expect.

The fourth is the one that catches Canadian businesses specifically, since British and American spellings both circulate here and a listener will pick whichever they use.

Hyphens cost more than they look

The most common failure and the easiest to avoid.

A hyphen makes a written domain clearer and makes a spoken one longer and more fragile, because you have to say the word dash and the listener has to remember where it went.

It also invites the wrong version: somebody who hears the name will frequently type it without the hyphen, and land on whoever owns that.

If a hyphenated domain is the only thing available, that is usually a sign the unhyphenated one is taken by somebody in a similar business, which is its own reason to reconsider.

Where you do use one, buy the unhyphenated version if it is available and redirect it, and expect to say the name slowly for as long as you trade.

Numbers are worse

Because they carry an ambiguity that hyphens do not.

A spoken number could be a digit or a spelled word, and the listener has no way to know which you registered.

Four, for, and the numeral are indistinguishable in speech, and two, too, and the numeral are the same problem.

That means a name containing a number needs both versions registered, which is either an expense or a permanent source of lost visitors.

The exception is a number that is unambiguously part of the identity, such as a year in the business name or a route number everybody local knows, and even those benefit from holding both forms.

A worked example

A contractor registered a domain containing both a hyphen and the numeral for a number in their trading name.

On the phone they found themselves saying the whole thing letter by letter, with the words dash and numeral, several times a day.

They tested it properly after about a year: three people, said once, typing what they heard.

None of the three produced the registered address. Two omitted the hyphen and one spelled the number as a word.

They registered both alternatives, redirected them to the original, and later moved to a shorter name entirely with the old one redirecting.

The immediate improvement was the two redirects, which cost very little and captured everybody who had been landing nowhere.

Buy the near misses

The practical remedy where the name is already chosen and cannot change.

Register the obvious variants and redirect them: with and without the hyphen, the number as a digit and as a word, the common misspelling, and the other extension.

Each costs a small annual fee and each captures people who would otherwise reach nothing or reach somebody else.

Two or three is usually enough, chosen from what people actually get wrong rather than from every theoretical variation.

The way to find out which ones matter is to listen: the versions customers say back to you, and the versions that arrive misspelled in emails, are the ones to buy.

Test the email address too

An extension of the same problem that is easy to forget.

Your email address contains the domain and is dictated even more often, frequently in noisier conditions, and with a name in front of it.

A first name that has two spellings, in front of a domain with a hyphen, is a genuinely difficult thing to give somebody over a phone.

Consider a short generic address for spoken use, such as one word before the domain, which is easier to dictate and easier to remember.

Having something you can say in one breath is worth more than having something that looks tidy on a card.

The counter-case

The spoken test is one consideration among several, not the deciding one.

Plenty of successful businesses have domains that are awkward to dictate, because customers find them by searching for the business name rather than typing an address, which is how most people navigate now.

A name that is distinctive, memorable, and matches the business may be worth more than one that dictates cleanly, and clarity in search results matters more than clarity on a phone for most sectors.

There is also little point changing an established domain over this, since the cost of moving exceeds the friction of spelling it.

Apply the test when choosing something new. Where the name is settled, buy the near misses and accept the spelling.

Before you register

1. Say it once to three people who have not seen it.
2. Have them type what they heard.
3. Avoid hyphens unless there is no alternative.
4. Avoid numbers, or buy both forms.
5. Check for two-spelling words.
6. Test the email address as well.
7. Buy the two or three near misses.

Step two is the whole test, and it takes five minutes to avoid a lifetime of spelling your own address.

The wider choice is covered in picking a domain you will not regret.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.