Us addresses and zip codes: US Zip Code Lookup by Address/City, Map (Postal Code, Postcode)

Addresses | Writing Style Guide

The following applies to addresses in the United States. Addresses in other countries should be presented in a style consistent with the postal requirements of that country. The correct way to present U.S. addresses is not determined by the style guides of Western Michigan University or the Associated Press, but by the requirements and preferences of the U.S. Postal Service.

Use the standard U.S. Postal Service abbreviations below for addresses, whether used in text or block address form.

As a general guide, the inclusion of a ZIP code makes it an address; the omission of a ZIP code makes it a location. (See also state abbreviations.)

Locations (no ZIP code present)

Associated Press Style is used for the listing of locations. Use the abbreviations Ave., Blvd. and St. with a numbered location: 2210 Wilbur Ave. Spell them out and capitalize when part of a formal street name without a number: Wilbur Avenue. All similar words—alley, drive, road, terrace—are always spelled out. Abbreviate compass points used to indicate directional ends of a street or quadrants of a city in a numbered address: 1903 W. Michigan Ave. Do not abbreviate if the number is omitted: West Michigan Avenue. Do not use periods in quadrant abbreviations—NW, SE: 2333 E. Beltline Ave. SE.

Paul and Mary Moore reside on East Main Street in Portage, Mich.
Paul and Mary Moore reside at 1234 E. Main St. in Portage, Mich.
The Graduate Center is located on East Beltline Avenue Southeast in Grand Rapids, Mich.
The Graduate Center is located at 2333 E. Beltline Ave. SE in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Always use figures for an address number. Spell out and capitalize First through Ninth when used as street names; use figures for 10th and above.

7 Fifth Ave.
100 21st St.

Addresses (ZIP code present)

USPS format is used for the listing of addresses. USPS abbreviations are used for both the street address and state, and there is no punctuation in the lines for the street address or city, state and ZIP code.

Write to Paul and Mary Moore, 1313 E Main St, Portage MI 49024-2001.

Paul and Mary Moore
1313 E Main St
Portage MI 49024-2001

University addresses and locations

Addresses for the Kalamazoo campuses of WMU should be presented as shown below. Always include the correct four-digit ZIP code extension (Mail Stop) for the department or office.

Mailing address:
Name of individual, Title (optional)
Name of college, department or office
Western Michigan University
1903 W Michigan Ave
Kalamazoo MI 49008-XXXX USA

Western Michigan University is globally engaged. Always include USA.

Locations at WMU should be presented in the following format.

Location:
3010 Seibert Administration Building, Mail Stop 5202

Common USPS-approved abbreviations

Apartment – Apt
Avenue – Ave
Boulevard – Blvd
Building – Bldg
Center(s) – Ctr
Circle(s) – Cir
Court – Ct
Drive – Dr
East- E
Expressway – Expy
Extension – Ext
Fort – Ft
Freeway – Fwy
Height(s) – Hts
Highway – Hwy
Island – Is
Junction – Jct
Lane – Ln
Mount(ain) – Mt
North – N
Northeast – NE
Northwest – NW
Parkway Pky
Place – Pl
Post Office – PO
Road – Rd
Rural Delivery – RD
Rural Route – RR
Saint – St
South – S
Southeast – SE
Southwest – SW
Spring – Spg
Springs – Spgs
Square(s) – Sq
Street – St
Suite – Ste
Terrace – Ter
Turnpike – Tpke
West – W

Office of Marketing and Strategic Communications
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5433 USA
(269) 387-8400

How the Postal Service got us to change the way we address letters

It’s not easy to get Americans to make wholesale changes to the systems they’re used to simply by declaring that they must. Ask anyone who enthusiastically tried to institute spelling reform or get the metric system to take hold.

So it’s surprising that just a little more than 50 years ago the Postal Service announced major changes to the way we were supposed to address our letters and postcards, and we actually went along with it.

The old way

In 1960 we still addressed letters the old way: Name, street address, city, state. There was no ZIP Code and the state might be written out in full, or abbreviated with 2 (N.Y., Vt. ), 3 (Nev., Tex.), 4 (Okla., Mich.) or 5 (Calif.) letters. Postal workers not only had to contend with bad handwriting and misspellings, but also with missing information that made it harder to get the mail to its destination.

The mail did get there through snow, rain, heat, and “gloom of night” (in the words of the unofficial motto of the Postal Service), but not in the most efficient way.

According a gripping 2013 report by the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General titled “The Untold Story of the ZIP Code,” “before the advent of the ZIP Code and automated sorting mechanisms, the average mailed letter was handled by eight to 10 postal employees. ” In the 1960s, a project for automation and efficiency began.

Cracking the code

Postmaster General Edward Day introduced the idea of the 5 digit ZIP Code. It was to expand on a 2 digit internal coding system that had been in place for grouping mail to large cities since 1943.

A ZIP code would make it possible to group mail at a level smaller than state and target the specific local post office that would deliver the items. It would also allow computerization of the sorting process. It would make delivering the mail much easier. The problem, however, was getting people to use it.

Telephone company executives who had been through the long process of implementing long-distance direct dialing “warned Day that they had experienced difficulty getting people to use area codes for telephone numbers”

Enter Mr. ZIP

Inspired by the successful adoption of postal codes in West Germany, Day saw that what was needed was a publicity campaign — a hook that got the message out.

“When Day unveiled the nationwide 5-digit ZIP Code at a postmasters’ convention in October of 1962, he simultaneously introduced the world to ‘Mr. ZIP.’”

Mr. ZIP, a happy cartoon postman who conveyed speedy accuracy with a smiling face, took his place on posters, buttons, decals, radio TV, and in classrooms around the country. He was also featured in a musical film by the Swingin’ Six where the boy gets the girl because he used a ZIP Code and his letter got to her in time.

Letter perfect

The addition of the ZIP Code to the mailing address made another change necessary. Because it added 5 characters, and addressing systems that businesses used generally only allowed a maximum set number of characters in each line, the Postal Service approved a set of codes that identified states using only 2 letters.

N. Mex. became NM, Oreg. became OR, Conn. became CT. There were some complaints about letter choiced, but the only one to change after 1963 was Nebraska. Nebr. had originally been assigned NB, which was deemed too suggestive of New Brunswick, Canada, and in 1969 it was changed to NE.

Nebraska had originally been assigned NB, which was deemed too suggestive of New Brunswick, Canada. In 1969, it was changed to NE.

Thanks to Mr. ZIP and the publicity campaign, the ZIP Code caught on, and by 1983 there was “almost 100% ZIP Code compliance.” It took a bit longer for people to get used to the new state abbreviations, but with the ZIP Code doing most of the location work, there was room for variation in how people wrote the state.

The ZIP Code numbers were available for anyone to use to organize information by location, and they became an important part of data tracking for the census, public utilities, health organizations, insurance, and marketing, just to name a few of the areas where it has proven useful.

Though there are now other ways to track data and other ways to send messages that don’t involve the Postal Service, “the ZIP Code is revealed to be a public good that has far surpassed its original intent. ”

Arika Okrent•November 5, 2019

How to write an address in English – Englishchoice Moscow

Hello. In this article, we will look at how to write an exact address in English. This may seem like a simple matter, but there are many different nuances here.

General rules for writing a postal address

The exact rules in different countries are usually regulated by their own regulations, but the general recommendations for the Universal Postal Union are as follows:

• The address must contain the following in this order: full name (full name, full name) addressee and/or legal entity name, apartment number (if any), building number, street, city or town name and postal code.

Important: the postal code must strictly correspond to the department that is closest to the recipient, that is, it must be “correct”, otherwise the letter may simply not reach or even be accepted. Fortunately, the UPU maintains a list through which you can find out the index in a large number of countries of the world: https://www. upu.int/en/Postal-Solutions/Programmes-Services/Addressing-Solutions (section “List of sites by country”) . Selecting a country will take you to the website of its postal service. There you can also find out how to specifically write the index for each state.

• The address must be duplicated in English, the names are not translated, but translated into Latin.
• If the envelope is clean, i.e., there are no inscriptions on it, the writing should be placed in the center of the envelope: no closer than 14 mm from the edges.

Full recommendations can be found in the “Addressing and Postcode Manual” written by the Universal Postal Union.

UK addresses

Royal Mail also has its own guidelines for writing addresses: the recipient should be slightly below and to the left of the center of the envelope, in the format:

• Sample (full name)
• Sample Building (number or building name )
• Sample Street
• Sample Town (post town)
• Postcode (Postal code)

For international shipments from abroad, obviously, you need to add “Great Britain UK”, with “United Kingdom” there may be technical problems and the shipment will not reach.

Ranking of schools where you can learn corporate English sorted by rating.

• There are a couple of other peculiarities: the Royal Mail does not recommend the county, it is not even taken into account in the distribution due to the organization of work;
• Sample Town is exactly the recipient’s postal city, and not the place where he lives, this must also be taken into account;
• Houses in Britain may not have a number but only a name to be written, or the number may be double.

Postcodes in the UK require a separate paragraph. This is an alphanumeric code consisting of 4-8 characters. It is divided into two parts by a space, the first of which indicates “Postcode Area” and “Postcode Distinct”, and after the space – “Postcode Sector” and “Unit Postcode”. Thanks to this ordered hierarchy, in Britain, you can use more than just addresses for navigation: Unit, for example, indicates a separate block, which sometimes locals do. The correctness of the index is even more important here than in the rest of the world.

Due to the confusing system of addresses, it can be very difficult to figure them out, so the British postal service has a service that allows you to quickly find out any address in the country online: https://addressnow.royalmail.com/. Not free, of course.

US English address

Writing it can be a difficult task for a person from the post-Soviet space because of the unfamiliarity. Addresses in the USA are written strictly in three lines, the first of which is the full name; the second – the house number, the name of the street and again the number, but the apartment; the third is the city, the reduced state and the index. Strictly in that order. Example:

• Smith Johnson
• 1337 Nice Avenue 13B
• Los Angeles, CA 1485-2484

Which means “To Mr. Smith Johnson at 1337 Nice Ave., Los Angeles, California, apt. 13b. Postcode 1485-2484. No commas are placed anywhere except on the third line between the city and the state. You also need to know the abbreviations. In the fourth, do not forget to indicate “USA USA”.

Postal codes in the US are called ZIP codes, which are even more complex than the UK ones. To find the code you need, there is an official service from USPS (US Postal Service): https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-lookup.html.

Russian address in English

It’s easier here. According to the UPU, the spelling of the address is almost the same as for domestic shipments, but in transliteration. Generic concept (street, house, apartment, etc.) is better not to translate. Address example:

Ivan Petrenko Pavlovich (full name)

1. Lenina, d. 15, kv 148 (street, house, apartment)
2. Kaluga (city)

RUSSIAN FEDERATION (Country)

183473 (Postcode)

London’s most famous address

This is 10 Downing Street. A legendary place that has been the permanent residence of the Prime Minister of Great Britain since 1735. Despite the small famous facade, it is a complex of three connected buildings with more than 100 rooms. The building has been restored many times, almost without changing the appearance. The house was subjected to several attacks, both from the air and by IRA terrorists from mortars in 1991. Therefore, one of the biggest exterior changes in the house: the old door is replaced with a metal copy, painted in the same black color. It cannot be opened from the outside, and the mailbox labeled “First Lord of the Treasury” is decorative.

The houses were built at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 18th centuries and even before the amalgamation, members of the families of monarchs lived there for some time, such as Princess Elizabeth Stuart in 1604-1613.

Vocabulary and abbreviations when making an address

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When writing international letters, it is necessary to observe the correct abbreviations and translation of names.