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In Canada at least, when I was a kid The Yellow Pages was the colloquial name for the entire book; yellow, green, white and all.
by na85 5y ago
In Canada at least, when I was a kid The Yellow Pages was the colloquial name for the entire book; yellow, green, white and all.
- rkagerer 5y agoIn the 90's in Toronto I always knew it as the White Pages.
- sammalloy 5y agoIt’s an interesting discussion. I’m fairly certain that the yellow pages only referred to commercial listings in the US, but I don’t recall anyone saying "check the white pages" for a residential number in the states, so maybe it was a colloquial misnomer.
- goodcanadian 5y agoAlso Canada, "yellow pages" referred specifically to the business directory and not the rest of the phone book. "White pages" was the residential. And, wait for it, "phone book" was used generically or to refer to the whole thing. YMMV.
- gwern 5y agoYeah, in my family no one ever made a distinction. You'd look someone up in the yellow pages, they were all in the same stack, and only a prig would correct you, "you mean, look him up in the White Pages".
- myself248 5y agoIn the US, we said "the phone book" to be generic. The specific books were always specific. As in "Did you look him up in the phone book?" which might be answered "I couldn't find him in the White Pages, but the phone's probably in his mom's name and I think she has a different last name, so that might be why. I think she has a business but I don't even know what industry so the Yellow Pages don't help here."