How NOT to address a letter

[Argus]

Wolfie, I hereby dub thee "Big Bad Wolfie", 'cuz that was just mean.

I'm not sure "mean" is the word I'd use for that.

[XCashier]

Its funny, about a quarter of the time at my job is interpreting the nonsense people provide as their address and enter it into the system for them.

Yes. I basically google-stalk people to confirm their shipping address because they're too dumb and/or lazy to give me their complete and accurate address when repeatedly asked.

It's sad that so many people cannot write their own address. I learned how in primary school, weren't these morons paying attention? Do they not notice, on the mail they receive, how the address goes in a certain pattern?! No, they insist on writing crap like:

Ima Loser
666 dumbass lane, smegville, O. 4444

Okay, fool, first of all, the city, state and zip go below the street address, not on the same line! Second, what the hell state is "O"?! Oregon? Ohio? Oklahoma? Obliviousness?! Third, US zip codes must have at least five numbers, not four. Twenty years ago, the USPS implemented the Zip+4, perhaps you should look into that, as well. In fact, go here and you'll find out how to write your address correctly.

Honestly, if folks would just pay attention to what they are doing, and take a little extra time to do it right, I think half the world's problems would be solved.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Second, what the hell state is "O"?!

You are obviously not up with the times. "O" refers to the state of Oprah.

[Jay 2K Winger]

You are obviously not up with the times. "O" refers to the state of Oprah.

Okay... I've heard of the joke of someone being so fat they need their own zip code, but that's going a bit far, isn't it?

...Yeah, I'm kind of ashamed of that one, too...

[PepperElf]

well she does have a big empire...

[dalesys]

... and a large (***) following ...


As Laura Love sings: Mah bootay, mah big ol booty...

[wolfie]

No, they insist on writing crap like:

Ima Loser
666 dumbass lane, smegville, O. 4444

Okay, fool, first of all, the city, state and zip go below the street address, not on the same line! Second, what the hell state is "O"?! Oregon? Ohio? Oklahoma? Obliviousness?! Third, US zip codes must have at least five numbers, not four.

Ambiguous addresses can cause problems. I remember one from about a year ago, I was picking up an LTL load from a partner company at a terminal in Massachusetts going to a terminal in Montreal (Quebec, Canada). I took a quick look at the master waybill, and went back to the dispatch window, telling them "I don't think this shipment belongs on the truck". Where was it going? Ontario, CA (note that "CA" has 2 meanings as a postal abbreviation - Canada and California. Guess which one this shipment was intended for). Cue the frantic call for the shunt driver to get the trailer back into a loading bay to pull that package (fortunately it was near the tail).

[XCashier]

Exactly right, wolfie. People need to write addresses carefully and correctly or the package won't get to where it's supposed to go.

Canada also has an address guide. I'm pretty sure that most countries do, but I'm too lazy to look them all up so here's the Universal Postal Union addressing guide.

Having had a few mailroom jobs and spent a lot of time with our eBay business, I'm pretty good about postal regulations and proper addressing, and what I don't know, I look up. As a result, we've had very few lost or misdelivered packages.

[Andara Bledin]

>_<

Addresses. Foreign addresses.

My favorite are the ones from countries whose addressing is a little less structured than we're used to (US, Canada, UK, etc.) that choose to write their address out all as one line.

Which part is the street? Which is the building? Which is the neighborhood versus the county? Do you even have counties? Is one of those a prefecture? Why is there no postal code? Your country uses those, now, you know! >_<

^-.-^

[Chromatix]

Even in the UK, there is a standard way to write any particular address. If you're not sure, you can ask the Post Office to tell you (after all, they have a vested interest in being able to read addresses accurately).

In most cases, it is:

Mr. J. Bloggs
42 Wibble Drive
CITYTOWN
C34 1BJ

The main differences from the European format are that the street number comes before the street name, and the postcode goes after the city and on a separate line.

Some places use two separate lines in place of the "number street" format. This happens when the building has a name instead of a number, or when the street is very minor and obscure and thus needs reference to another street to locate it.

Another variation is that unless the post-town is a major city, many people add the county so that it doesn't get confused with another town of the same or a similar name (though strictly speaking, the postcode should also do that).

So for example:

Ms. V. Woods
2a The Tiny Ginnel
Redhill Lane
LITTLEVILLAGE-UNDER-LYME
FORESTSHIRE
LV56 2XX

The postcode is the really important bit. The letter will get to within a couple of hundred yards of the right place, just with that. Everything else is just to make it human-readable, to verify that the postcode is in fact correct, and to deal with the fine detail needed for the postman on his beat to put it in the right letterbox.

[greek_jester]

The main differences from the European format are that the street number comes before the street name, and the postcode goes after the city and on a separate line.

Strictly speaking correct, except it's not a road number, it's a building number. The 2nd road line is more for "Flat no. X" than for building names, as they're getting rarer.

Another variation is that unless the post-town is a major city, many people add the county so that it doesn't get confused with another town of the same or a similar name (though strictly speaking, the postcode should also do that).

One of the reasons the county line is still put in is because private postcodes are often entered incorrectly. It's a double-check for the Posties.

There's also the fact that a large chunk of the British population is just used to including the county. The postcode system was phased in between 1959 & 1974.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcod...United_Kingdom

As such, many people alive today remember a time when they wrote to their friends/family without the postcode (for instance, my mum's best friend has lived at the same address for 40 years, & mum only learned the postcode last year). In fact, I was born only a few years after the phase-in finished, so I grew up with the advertising campaign to persuade people to use the postcode system.

[Hyndis]

A major problem I run into on a continual basis are people who don't put down what country they live in. So great, they managed to put in their street address, city, county, post code...but what country do you live in?

Sometimes its very easy. If you're typing in Cyrillic and live in Moscow I can probably guess where you live. Likewise if you're typing an address with English words and you're based in Europe, then you likely live in England.

Typing in German and you live on 123 mainstrasse? Could be Germany, Austria or Switzerland. It would be helpful if you indicate which country you live in.

[Andara Bledin]

Typing in German and you live on 123 mainstrasse? Could be Germany, Austria or Switzerland. It would be helpful if you indicate which country you live in.

Actually, for those three, the postcode will tell you the country. Germany begins with a D, Switzerland with a CH, and Austria with an A. Sweden has SE. Luxemborg has an L.

Either that, or the companies themselves are using the letter codes to specify their countries on their own, which is just as well. If they don't have at least that, however, they're prats for not giving you more info.

I hate having to resort to looking things up on the internet because a company couldn't be bothered to write their full address. I get the impression that South Korea (for example) hasn't been using postal codes long enough for their inclusion to be automatic, yet.

^-.-^

[Aethian]

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