I need help with an address in England, no lines, no commas? I can’t decipher how to write it? Can someone familiar Message me?
The key bit is the postcode at the end, which looks like SW1A 1AA. As long as that’s clear, that gets the letter into the right bundle for delivery (try entering it into Google Maps, and you’ll see how precise it is.
From the other end, here’s the official advice
I was going to link to the same site as Patrick, which covers addressing when shipping within the UK. When mailing from outside the UK, all that is followed on a separate line by the name of the country you’re mailing to. Some years ago, I found out the hard way you’re not supposed to use “England” or even “The United Kingdom” for the country. They want “Great Britain and Northern Ireland”.
Now I’m seeing some websites that claim “England” and/or “The United Kingdom” are acceptable. All I know is that the last time I mailed something to England (maybe ten years ago), my local postmistress told me it had to be “Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”
I suppose the official listings of the relevant international agreements refer to “Great Britain and Northern Ireland” as completely unambiguous, but I’d be very surprised if our Royal Mail refused mail that used a variant form of the country name. Millions of us used to send postcards home from abroad, addressed as Angleterre/Inglaterra/Inghilterra or whatever without any difficulty. Or maybe it’s an issue in the US mail system?
The country part is more important in the country of origin, so that they send it to the right place. I would have thought that Great Britain or England would be fine; Scotland would probably be okay, but not Wales, N. Ireland or any other abbreviation like UK or GB.
When we used to send postcards (remember them?) from our holidays, we would always write England at the end of the address in the local language - "Angleterre/Inglaterra/Inghilterra "
Just to reinforce what Patrick said - it is vital to get the postcode correct and to write it in block capitals. We got a Christmas card yesterday with our name, but the wrong street and no number on it. The postcode was correct though, and we only share that with nine other houses.
I have many times mailed things to the U.K. where I put down England at the bottom of the address. It’s always gotten there. You should always include the postcode (that thing that looks like SW1A 1AA or whatever). This is the equivalent of the zip code in the U.S. Although they say you should write the rest of the address in a format which makes the address take up more space, often as many as five lines, that’s really not a big deal. I have often written the address in a format closer to an American address and it’s gotten there.
I’ve got 33 years of sending letters marked “U.K.” says she’s wrong.
Yeah, any time I’ve sent postcards home from abroad I’ve put U.K. and they’ve always turned up ok. I figure two big, clear letters will be easier to read than my scrawl of anything else!
The postcode is important but I must admit that we’ve had mail turn up with the wrong street number or slightly wrong postcode. A couple of times with a slightly inaccurate address but also with just our given names!
We have good postmen!
I’ve sent plenty of stuff from the US to the UK, and it’s gotten there fine. I write out UNITED KINGDOM, just like that, in all caps and underlined. When I have been abroad, I have addressed things to USA, all caps, underlined. I get stuff addressed to USA as well.
I was always taught to underline the country. Not sure why. I suppose because there are cities and counties in the US named for foreign nations. I mean, it ought to be pretty self-explanatory, but who knows. You get someone there on there first day at the PO, who knows there a city in Indiana called Brazil, but hasn’t heard of the country? it’s possible. I just met someone who has a high school diploma and a year of technical school, who didn’t know there was such a country as Portugal. Oy.
I am having trouble deciphering between the street name and city, they are all run together. Then there looks to be another city name after the postal code??
Yeah, that happens sometimes, like in the address in the official address advice in the link given in post #2:
Miss S Pollard
1 Chapel Hill
Heswall
BOURNEMOUTH
BH1 1AA
What this means is that Pollard lives on a street named Chapel Hill at the house with the number 1 on that street. The neighborhood or suburb that she lives in is called Heswall. Heswall is part of (or near to) the city of Bournemouth. It’s possible that in the address you were given, HoneyBadgerDC, the name of the city was written after the postcode instead of before it.
Note: I’m pretending that the address given in the official address advice is real. It’s clearly not. There’s no Chapel Hill in Bournemouth or in Heswall, and those two places are far apart. Incidentally, you might wonder whether Heswall is a suburb of Bournemouth or a neighborhood of it. It’s not very clear in the U.K. from an address which is true. Addresses with two cities in them, like this pretend one, are common. The city name toward the bottom of the address is the bigger city, and the city name toward the middle is the smaller one.
You might try using Google Maps to figure out exactly where the person who you’re sending the letter to lives and use that to straighten out the address.
This where different terminology can cause confusion: in British usage, neither Heswall nor Bournemouth is a city, they’re both towns. In the example, Bournemouth is the Post Town, and Heswall may be a suburb or district of Bournemouth, or an entirely separate town or village which merely happens to have its mail distributed through Bournemouth for logistical reasons.
Once the piece of mail is in the UK postal system, this is all that’s really needed.
I will try that
The oddity I remember from trips to England was that many houses had names, usually cutesy ones. But I doubt those are used in the addresses.
They absolutely are. My house, and all my neighbours’ within at least a mile’s radius, have only names, no numbers.
If the postcode BH1 1AA gets you just Chapel Hill street, that’s true, Baron Greenback. It’s true in the U.S. too. If you put just my family’s last name and the zip code of the town nearest the farm we lived on, it should have gotten to our mailbox, since we were the only ones with that name anywhere close to that very small town. I wouldn’t get in a habit of putting down a minimalist address. Any one mistake in it would mean the letter wouldn’t get there. For what it’s worth, in the pretend address given in the official address advice, I would have included the county that Bournemouth is in. I think it’s best to give the post office as much information as you can rather than playing minimalism games. Incidentally, perhaps the ultimate in minimalism was when a letter made it from New Zealand to Mad’s editorial offices in New York with just a picture of Alfred E. Newman on it.
Many houses do have “cutesy” names and most of the time they will have a street number as well. This is not invariable, however, especially in rural villages. Many farms, for example, are addressed by heir name - Marsh Farm etc -rather than a number and a street.
Thank you all so much, I got some direct help via private message, exactly what I needed. Thanks all again.