The American Wire Gauge (AWG) is a standard for diameters of round solid, nonferrous electrically conducting wires and the standard is used predominantly in North America. Larger gauge numbers correspond to decreasing wire diameters. The gauges define the total cross sectional area which then correlates to the wire's electrical resistance and current carrying capacity. The AWG standard has two fixed gauge points in the scale:  No. 36 AWG is defined to be exactly 0.005 inches in diameter and No. 0000 is defined to be 0.46 inches in diameter.