All of the above with a clarification: they are instance methods which you are calling statically. The object is not instantiated in this case. PHP allows this but will issue an E_STRICT warning. To remove the warning just add "static" before each of them, assuming they are only ever called statically: class myClass { static function &doThis($passedVar) { doSomething; } static function &doThat($anotherVar) { doSomethingElse; } } David