I’d like to send my friend a surprise t-shirt gift, and I’ve found his address through Google. Is this the right way to format it? It’s all on one line on the page I found.
Ekvägen 8,
428 37,
Kållered, VÄSTRA GÖTALAND
First of all, add SWEDEN at the bottom. No-one outside Scandinavia (ETA: and probably far from all non-Swedish Scandinavians, either) would know where the heck “Västra Götaland” is.
The general format for most European postal addresses is
[Name]
[Street] [#]
[Zip] [City]
[COUNTRY]
Basically, we put the zip code before city name, and we don’t use state/territory. Of course [Country] is used only for international shipments. You may add [Country code] before [Zip], i.e. SE-428 37.
=>
Ekvägen 8,
428 37 Kållered
SWEDEN
OR
Ekvägen 8,
SE-428 37 Kållered
SWEDEN
I did know to put SWEDEN at the bottom, but thanks for the particulars. I didn’t want to get this package back 2 weeks later for something dumb.
The official guide for addressing in Sweden, along with those of pretty much every other country, is available from the Universal Postal Union. All the national post offices have submitted their official addressing formats for inclusion on this site, which is then presented in a simple and consistent manner with examples and notes. According to the UPU page for Sweden, 2square4u’s format is basically correct, except that you shouldn’t put a comma after the street number.
Don’t forget the country code before the zip code! I once read about a letter sent to a correct street address, correct zip-code (lacking country code, though), correctly addressed to Lyon and France, that added up in a place in Northern Sweden that happened to have the same zip.
Yes, country code before zip is recommended. It ought to be redundant, given the COUNTRY NAME in ALL CAPS at the bottom, but don’t assume that reading for comprehension is a required condition to work in a postal service. I tried to send a letter from USA to Norway, complete with both country name and country code; it spent about four weeks in Mexico before it was returned to sender. After being opened and taped shut again…
No, country code before the post code is not recommended, unless the receiving country specifies otherwise. It’s going to be particularly confusing for countries such as Canada and the UK which use alphabetic characters in their post codes; even most countries which use purely numeric codes specifically instruct against prepending a country code. Sweden appears to be an exception to this rule, but keep in mind that the country code should be used only for letters addressed to Sweden. If you’re already in Sweden and writing to, say, Germany, you do not prepend “D-” or “DE-” to the post code; you just write “TYSKLAND” as the last line, because that’s all Posten AB needs to know for its part in the delivery process.
Again, consult the UPU addressing guides if you want to know what the postal services themselves require for proper and efficient delivery.
To be honest, I normally write the country name in English when posting abroad. If, for some reason, it ends up somewhere weird the locals are going to be more likely to understand “Germany” than “Tyskland”.
For the same reason I break my usual stance on things being British and post things to England, Scotland etc instead of “Great Britain” or “Storbritannien”.
The international language for postal services (as for diplomatic business) is actually French.
That just means that the UPU conducts its own business in French (though it added English as a working language in 1994). For the purposes of addressing letters, you can use the official language of the country you’re posting it in, or any other language specified by the UPU for writing country names. I know that English and French are accepted; there may be others as well but I can’t find the reference just now.
I doubt very much that it wouldn’t get delivered simply because the line breaks are in the wrong place. Postal systems pride themselves in being able to deliver mail on which the addresses are much more garbled than this.
And the general term is “postal code”, not “zip code”. “ZIP code” is, specifically, the name of the US postal code, though I think one or two other countries might use the term. In Australia, the term is “postcode”. I think the Indian term is “PIN code” but I could be wrong.
Call me weird, but I just expect a postal worker to have a better knowledge of English that French in most places.