Seven-digit dialing is a telephone dialing procedure customary in some territories of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for dialing telephone numbers in the same numbering plan area (NPA). NANP telephone numbers consist of ten digits, of which the leading three are the area code. In seven-digit dialing it is not necessary to dial the area code. The procedure is also sometimes known as local format or network format.

Originally, telephone exchanges consisted of manual switchboards operated by switchboard operators. Telephone numbers had typically two to four digits, depending on the size of the community. As the number of subscribers grew, multiple exchanges served individual neighborhoods of large cities. Multiple exchanges were identified by a central office name and typically four digits, such as "Pennsylvania 5000". A rural telephone number, often party line, had often up to four digits and a letter or letter and digits to indicate which of the multiple parties on the line was desired.

Various methods were used to convert these to dialable numbers as dial systems replaced manual switchboards; many moderately-large cities used a 2L-4N format where "ADelaide 1234" would be dialled as AD-1234 (23-1234, a six-digit local call). The four largest cities (New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston) used seven digits. In New York, for example, "PENnsylvania 5000" became PEN-5000 and later PEnnsylvania 6-5000, dialled PE6-5000 or 736–5000). New York used the 3L-4N format from 1920, when dial telephones were first introduced there, until 1930, when it switched to 2L-5N.

The original North American area codes were assigned in 1947 as routing codes for operator calls, but by 1951, the first cross-country Bell System direct distance dial was placed directly from a subscriber station. The system was based on fixed-length numbers; a direct-dial long-distance call consisted of a three-digit area code and a seven-digit local number. Numbers in 2L-4N cities (such as Montréal and Toronto) were systematically lengthened to seven digits in the 1950s, a few exchanges at a time, so that all local numbers were seven digits when direct distance dialling finally came to town.

Exchange prefixes were added to small-town numbers to extend four or five-digit local numbers to the standardised seven-digit length, matching in length the then-longest local numbers in the largest major US markets.

Within the multinational calling area administered by the North American Numbering Plan, telephone numbers are composed of three fixed-length fields: a three-digit numbering plan area (NPA) code (area code), a three-digit (NXX) central office code, and a four-digit (XXXX) station number.

In seven-digit dialing, only the central office code and the station number is dialed, indicating that the call destination is within the local area code. This was the standard in most of North America from the 1950s onward. In some small villages with only one local exchange, it may have been permissible to dial only the four-digit station number. Even after exchange names were introduced, it was possible in many small cities to call local numbers by dialing only the five digits which followed.

A long-distance call within the same area code could often be dialed as 1+7D, without using an area code. The scheme relied on the second digit of an area code being 0–1 and the second digit of a local exchange being 2–9. This dialing plan was incompatible with the introduction of area code 334 and area code 360, and was therefore eliminated by January 1, 1995, in the United States, and by September 1994 in Canada. It was also eliminated as early as 1981 in some numbering plan areas in the United States that had introduced interchangeable central office codes.