A poll

[james_davis_nicoll]

[Poll #1936936]

Comments

[deor.livejournal.com]

Actually, the dashes break up the geographic indicators, the publisher block, the book's identifier, and the check digit. For instance, Oxford University Press is 978-0-19-blah-blah, the "19" block after the 0 showing the publisher. It may not confuse computers - an ISBN can be read as a unique set of digits either way - but the lack of dashes severely limits the human ability to distinguish the publisher at a glance for those who are involved enough with books to be able to do that (booksellers, librarians, booknerds, etc.)

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've been working on a book-related website, and the isbn13 values we get have no dashes in them.