Address
They are used in identifying buildings as the end points of a postal system and as parameters in statistics collection, especially in census-taking and the insurance industry.
[2] Street naming and numbering began under the age of Enlightenment, also as part of campaigns for census and military conscription, such as in the dominions of Maria Theresa in the mid 18th century.
[1] Numbering allowed the efficient delivery of mail, as the postal system evolved in the 18th and 19th centuries to reach widespread usage.
Such an address might read: "Smith Cottage, Frog Lane, Barchester, Barsetshire, BZ9 9BA" or "Dunroamin, Emo, Co. Laois, Ireland" (fictional examples).
In some housing developments in North America and elsewhere, street names may all follow the same theme (for example, bird species), or start with the same letter.
Streets in Continental Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America are often named after famous people or significant dates.
In most of the world, addresses are written in order from most specific to general, i.e. finest to coarsest information, starting with the addressee and ending with the largest geographical unit.
Rural Addresses In Belarus, some neighbourhoods may be planned in such a way that some, or most, apartment buildings don't face a named street.
Here are some formatting rules that are used in common: See the example below for a comparison of the English and French address formats: English (from Canada Post): French (from the OQLF): Chilean urban addresses require only the street name, house number, apartment number (if necessary) and municipality; however, more information is frequently included, such as commune (neighbourhood or town) and region.
Smaller cities often consist of only one municipality with several unofficial comunes (neighborhoods) that are usually mentioned even for official addressing purposes.
[18] The Chinese-language address format is: Province, prefecture-level city, district or county (sometimes omitted), township or town or subdistrict (often omitted), village or community (usually omitted), road name, road number, building name, floor/level, room numberHowever, as a member of the Universal Postal Union (UPU), China Post also supports UPU's English-language address in the little-endian order, which means that English-language address is written from the smallest geographical area to the largest geographical area.
The example is:[18] 3 5 0 5 0 3 福建省福州市连江县丹阳镇新洋村团结路10号陈立国 先生 收 The international letters to China support English-language address in the little-endian order.
On pre-printed Czech postcards and envelopes, the postal code is written on a separate last row in boxes for each number.
If the envelope doesn't have pre-printed rows and boxes, the postal code should be before the town (or post office) name.
In most larger cities and also in some towns and large villages with street names, there is a double system of house numbering.
[24] However, for an overseas mail from Hong Kong to mainland China, Macao, Taiwan or Singapore, the address may be written entirely in Chinese.
Various abbreviations might appear in the precise street/building address: for instance, specifying the street type (út, utca, krt., tér, etc.
A Japanese postal address, when written in Japanese phonetic and Chinese characters, starts with the largest geographical division, continues with progressively smaller subdivisions before ending with the addressee, i.e. country, prefecture, town, chōme, banchi, building number, building name, floor number, company name, addressee.
It is common practice to add the appropriate honorific to the addressee's name, e.g. 様 for a private individual or 御中 for a company or institution.
When written in the Latin alphabet, the address begins with the smallest geographical area and ends with the largest one as in the Anglicized example in the table.
In Latvia, the address is generally formatted as follows: Notes: Further reference: Latvijas Pasts The official languages of Macao are Cantonese and Portuguese.
However, for overseas mail from Macau to mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan or Singapore, the address may be written entirely in Chinese.
The ideal format for this method is the number after the postal code, meaning that this: '5627 BX 1092' will still get the letter delivered to the correct location.
It is also possible to replace the street name line with a PO box (e.g. "postbus 1200") or freepost number (e.g. "antwoordnummer 150"), which have their own postal code.
For example: The city in this case is important, as if Wellington is used instead of Lower Hutt and the postcode is unclear (note only the first digit differs), someone's private mail could accidentally be sent to the New Zealand Parliament Buildings instead (or vice versa).
For these areas, Street name + Number is replaced by a local designation determined by the Norwegian postal service.
In Saudi Arabia, the address could be written in Arabic or English in the following format:[31][32][33] Serbian postal addresses conform to rules similar to continental European rules: In addition to 5-digit postal code, another line can be added containing PAK, a six-digit number which encodes the town, street and house number section.
The first digit indicates the area: The simpler the code, the bigger the locality: 1000 Ljubljana, 2000 Maribor (big cities); 1310 Ribnica, 9250 Gornja Radgona (mid-sized towns); 4263 Bohinjska Bela, 8262 Krška vas (smaller settlements, including villages).
In the United Kingdom, the format specified by the postal operator Royal Mail is as follows:[41] The locality is required only where its absence would cause ambiguity, for example where a post town or postcode district includes two streets with the same name.
Royal Mail discourage this usage and specify that all lines should start from the same point and not be staggered or aligned to the centre.
