# Question for non Americans - mailing addresses **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 29, 2015, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634 "2015-12-29T12:20:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2015, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/41 "2015-12-29T18:38:15Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > I know that the US system uses machine reading; there is manual backup of course, and you can’t really claim that something “doesn’t interfere with mail delivery” just because mail still arrives. Actually, yes. Yes I can. And I do. > [@](#): > > If there is machine reading of zip codes, an obvious reason for an easily-read two digit state abbreviation is that it gives an error check against the zip, where’ you’d flag anything that didn’t match for manual intervention. In that case, the full state name is an even better error check. And if this is a real issue—and I doubt that it is—then this error check software was written very badly. The Postal Service system should absolutely not be designed depend on people adhering to nitpicky standards like this. The system should be designed to take into account a wide variety of variation on the part of users. And if it was designed that way, then fuck them. > [@](#): > > Even if everything is manual, a standard format surely makes life easier for a postal worker scanning through masses of mail. There is absolutely no way I will believe that using a full state name—as opposed to a two-letter abbreviation—makes it harder for a human worker to scan through addresses. A two-letter abbreviation system simply begs for errors. > [@](#): > > It does not strike me as something where a desire to assert my Freedom outweighs trying to help out the post office by cooperating, even if I’m not worried about getting my mail delivered quickly and accurately. I’m not going to voluntarily comply with an inefficiently and illogically designed and aesthetically displeasing system for so trivial and speculative a harm. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2015, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/42 "2015-12-29T18:45:05Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I’m not going to voluntarily comply with an inefficiently and illogically designed and aesthetically displeasing system for so trivial and speculative a harm. If you’re really so assured that you know best, and it’s really so important to you to write out the state in full, fair enough. We’re all entitled to our little quirks, and no, it’s not causing death to _many_ kittens and puppies. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2015, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/43 "2015-12-29T19:11:13Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > City addesses in Thailand resemble U.S. addresses, but rural addresses in Thailand have no street name: House\_# Village\_# / Subdistrict / District / Province / Zipcode. How about rural addresses in other countries? Do they have street names? > > (Street names may be impossible here because _rural streets don’t have names_! For more than 20 years I’ve lived on a long major road connecting a dozen villages and providing access to dozens more but when I made inquiries long ago about the road’s name I was met with blank stares. “We don’t talk that way; we just say we’re going to such-and-such village.”) Spanish roads always have a code consisting of one or more letters to indicate type of road/governing body (for example: A for freeway, GI for local road in GIrona) plus some numbers, so a rural address can always be given as “road XX-###, km ###”. Your parenthesis produces a lot of Spanish street names: for example, in any town within 120km of Saragossa, there is a 90%+ probability that the biggest street, i.e., the street which happens to be part of the road to Saragossa, will be called… _Carretera de Zaragoza_. Road to Saragossa 🙂 Any street called _Carretera de Wherever_ tells you Wherever is nearby(ish). One of my college classmates had a very short mail address: Her name, Village, Province. When we asked for details she explained that the whole village had less than 400 people and her father owned the only factory: you can see the family lastname written in huge letters on the side of the factory from the main road, 5km away. So yeah, street names, we don’t need no stinkin’ street names. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/44 "2015-12-30T02:23:41Z")
Thai addresses are rendered very similarly to US addresses, complete with a postal code that resembles the ZIP Code. In fact, I used to have a problem with one of my US credit-card companies in that Bangkok postal codes resemble New York City ZIP Codes. Their mail to me was forever getting sent to NYC and returned to them marked “No Such Address” until I finally got that straightened out after quite a few international phone calls. It may have changed, but I recall Nepal had no addresses at all, not even Kathmandu. Letters had to be sent to the nearest post office, and the mailman just knew where everyone lived. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/45 "2015-12-30T05:59:29Z")
Canadian addresses are not too different from US ones: Sunspace Q Jones, 43-234 Big St, Weird City, ON M2V 4T7 Canada The main difference is the postal code, which is alphanumeric in a format that is as far as I know unique in the world: letter number letter space number letter number. It goes on the same line as the city and province code, separated by two spaces. The province codes are coordinated to NOT duplicate US state codes (unlike Mexican state codes). “43-234 Big St” is a common way of abbreviating “234 Big St, apartment/suite/etc 43”. Though you do see it written out in full like that as well. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/46 "2015-12-30T06:13:06Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > Canadian addresses are not too different from US ones: > > Sunspace Q Jones, > 43-234 Big St, > Weird City, ON M2V 4T7 > Canada Yeah but… the first time I got a mailing address from an associate in Ottawa, I wondered why he’d given me his license plate number instead of his zip code. When I got the second and third like that the following day, I caught on to you having letters in yours unlike the US. ---
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/47 "2015-12-30T06:46:42Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > The province codes are coordinated to NOT duplicate US state codes (unlike Mexican state codes). They even changed the code for Nebraska from NB to NE so that New Brunswick could have it. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/48 "2015-12-30T07:45:08Z")
puzzlegal writes: \> I have a friend who was a Chinese woman at a major university in Japan. She \> once received a letter addressed to \> \> Her Full Name \> Japan \> \> It took a while to find her, but it DID find her. There were times when letters got delivered to _Mad_ magazine with nothing on them except a picture of Alfred E. Neuman and a stamp (and the second one below came all the way from New Zealand): > **["Totally MAD" Excerpt: Who is Alfred E. Neuman?](https://www.madmagazine.com/blog/2012/12/19/totally-mad-excerpt-who-is-alfred-e-neuman)** > > For the last few weeks, we've been posting excerpts from the essays Frank Jacobs wrote for our 60th Anniversary book,  > **[12 Things You Might Not Know About MAD Magazine](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/65069/12-things-you-may-not-know-about-mad)** > > As fast as popular culture could erect wholesome depictions of American life in comics, television, or movies, MAD Magazine was there to tear them all down. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/49 "2015-12-30T08:25:49Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > The point is that US street numbers are almost never serially numbered (to allow for increasing density and the like) whereas European numbers almost always are. In Colombia the number of your house is the distance from your door to the corner (in meters)–with the number of the cross street as a “prefix,” (just about every street is a number.) So a typical address might be Kr. 83-b No. 51-25 which means the door of your house is on Carrera 83-b, 25 meters from the corner with Calle 51. So even if there is no number posted on a building, you can (more or less) know its address just by measuring the distance. It’s surprisingly logical for a place where just about everything else isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/50 "2015-12-30T13:15:32Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > puzzlegal writes: > > \> I have a friend who was a Chinese woman at a major university in Japan. She > \> once received a letter addressed to > \> > \> Her Full Name > \> Japan > \> > \> It took a while to find her, but it DID find her. > > There were times when letters got delivered to _Mad_ magazine with nothing on them except a picture of Alfred E. Neuman and a stamp (and the second one below came all the way from New Zealand): > > [MAD Magazine | Welcome to MAD](http://www.madmagazine.com/blog/2012/12/19/totally-mad-excerpt-who-is-alfred-e-neuman) > > [12 Things You Might Not Know About MAD Magazine | Mental Floss](http://mentalfloss.com/article/65069/12-things-you-may-not-know-about-mad) These are even better than the most impressive postal feat I had heard of to date. Two guys whom I knew slightly, had a holiday a few decades ago in an Asian country. They sent off a postcard from there, to a friend and fellow-hobbyist of theirs who had a slightly unusual surname, and worked at one of the big London railway stations. Let’s say his name was Fortescue, and he worked at Euston station. For a lark and to see what would happen, they addressed the card just: Fortescue Euston England It successfully got to the guy ! ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/51 "2015-12-30T16:29:08Z")
> [@Baron\_Greenback](#): > > Underwater Road > Floodtown > FL13 5QX > **[Flood warning information](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26189096)** > > Information on flood warnings across the England, Scotland and Wales. Flood warnings galore! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![John\_Bredin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@John\_Bredin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Bredin)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/52 "2015-12-30T23:34:01Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Like, here’s one for a touristy hotel I just googled: > > Bruno’s Hotel and Marina > abajo del puente > Fronteras, Rio Dulce > Livingston, Izabal > Guatemala. Under the bridge, as in troll? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/53 "2015-12-30T23:57:29Z")
> [@John\_Bredin](#): > > Under the bridge, as in troll? 🙂 RIGHT?! I had to google translate it, and couldn’t stop giggling. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/54 "2015-12-31T04:35:40Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > These are even better than the most impressive postal feat I had heard of to date. Two guys whom I knew slightly, had a holiday a few decades ago in an Asian country. They sent off a postcard from there, to a friend and fellow-hobbyist of theirs who had a slightly unusual surname, and worked at one of the big London railway stations. Let’s say his name was Fortescue, and he worked at Euston station. For a lark and to see what would happen, they addressed the card just: > > Fortescue > Euston > England > > It successfully got to the guy ! The British TV quiz show Countdown used to frequently read out letters from viewers, and for a while there was a thing where the viewers would write decreasingly less detailed addresses. I don’t remember what they were exactly, but they got as far as something like “Richard and Carol” the presenters’ names, and nothing else, and da-da, da-da, da-da-da-da, da! - the tune of the countdown clock - and, on a different letter, a sample maths question in Countdown format. No actual address at all. They all got to them. Countdown was on at 3.15 at the time, quite a convenient time for posties to watch, I guess, which probably helped. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/55 "2015-12-31T04:43:56Z")
> [@John\_Bredin](#): > > Under the bridge, as in troll? 🙂 > [@WhyNot](#): > > RIGHT?! I had to google translate it, and couldn’t stop giggling. No, downriver from the bridge. With that detail I’d expect the river and bridge to be easily visible from each other; the hotel might even be right at the bridge, on the downriver side of the bridge’s road. There’s two public pools in my home town which happen to be upriver from the bridge and downriver from the bridge; easiest way to give indications to outsiders is to tell them how to reach the bridge and to “look upriver and you’ll see it” or “look downriver and you’ll see it”. Their respective sides say FRONTÓN and ARENAS in huge letters. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/56 "2015-12-31T05:04:27Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > [Flood warning information - BBC News](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26189096) > > Flood warnings galore! > > 😃 Well done Quartz, that’s the second time you’ve noticed that in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/57 "2015-12-31T05:10:38Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > Back in the UK, all mail is mechanically scanned, and it’s the postcode that sends it to the nearest sorting office to the recipient. After that it is sorted by the posties and hand delivered to our front door letterboxes. Actually, if it’s hand written, it’s hand sorted; the scanners don’t really work well with hand writing, especially as postcodes can be kinda ambiguous, so both B55 XXX and BS5 XXX are valid, but one’s Birmingham and one’s Bristol. Personally, I would stick the county on as a back-up for that reason, it’s not distracting as long as it’s above the postcode. I worked as a Christmas temp at the regional central sorting office last year, and we just got everything straight from the local pick ups, totally unsorted. International post mixed with stuff going three streets away. We got 0 training, just a safety brief, and a “sort this lot into these pigeon holes, ask if you get stuck, anything you can’t work out goes into this one”. The theory seemed to be that as everything got sorted 3 times minimum; first main area code (the letter or letters at the start, so the B or BS from the examples above) then sent to the main local office for to be sorted again by the area number (the 5 or 55) then the local sorting office for the final pick, hopefully newbie errors should get found out and redirected with minimal delay. A scary number of people seemed to assume that locally sent letters would just be dealt with at the local post office branch, so did stuff like putting just a person and a house name, or maybe a street, so you got stuff like: Joe Bloggs, The Old Priory, New Street that had been to 4 different counties, because dammit they have to try and deliver them all. People also often put US and Australian state abbreviations, without the country name. On a different continent. Genius. Was a pretty interesting job, for a few weeks at least. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/58 "2015-12-31T17:27:23Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > Japan doesn’t have street names for all but the largest streets. Instead, the neighborhoods are named, and frequently these neighborhoods are divided up into sections called _chome_. > > Each block in that neighborhood is numbered and then the houses are numbered around the block. I should also note that once the numbering of the properties is done, they can’t or don’t renumber if any of the lots are subdivided. We lived in a place which had six or seven houses all with the same address. For some reason, they don’t add an A, B or C, etc., after the house number. We would have to tell the delivery guys the color of our house. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/59 "2015-12-31T18:05:15Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > Canadian addresses are not too different from US ones: > > Sunspace Q Jones, > 43-234 Big St, > Weird City, ON M2V 4T7 > Canada > > The main difference is the postal code, which is alphanumeric in a format that is as far as I know unique in the world: letter number letter space number letter number. It goes on the same line as the city and province code, separated by two spaces. > > The province codes are coordinated to NOT duplicate US state codes (unlike Mexican state codes). Small nitpicks: Commas are not usually used at the ends of address lines, and [Canada Post guidelines](https://www.canadapost.ca/tools/pg/manual/PGaddress-e.asp?ecid=murl10006450) say “avoid using ‘Canada’ in domestic addresses.” They also say “There should be one space between the municipality and the province or territory, and two spaces between the province or territory and the Postal Code” and “Punctuation should not be used unless it is part of a proper name, such as in ‘ST. JOHN’S’.” ---
**Author:** ![rsat3acr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a3d4f5/32.png) [@rsat3acr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsat3acr)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634/60 "2015-12-31T18:23:42Z")
> [@IvoryTowerDenizen](#): > > Just for completeness sake, the comma goes between city and state. > > Disney Headquarters > 101 Happy Lane > Los Angeles, California 90210 > Att: Mickey Mouse > > If use an ATTN: I always write it on the bottom edge of the envelope, away from the address. That’s generally for internal use (once it gets to where it’s going), not for Post Office use. > > I would re-write your address like this: > > Mickey Mouse > Disney Headquarters > 101 Happy Lane > Los Angeles, California 90210 Actually the USPS prefers no comma and two letter abbreviation for the state [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-for-non-americans-mailing-addresses/741634.md?page=4)