Abstract: | We consider lower bounds on the the vertex‐distinguishing edge chromatic number of graphs and prove that these are compatible with a conjecture of Burris and Schelp 8 . We also find upper bounds on this number for certain regular graphs G of low degree and hence verify the conjecture for a reasonably large class of such graphs. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 42: 95–109, 2003 |