Address (geography)

Functions

Addresses have several functions:

providing a means of physically locating a building, especially in a city where there are many buildings and streets;

identifying buildings as the end points of a postal system;

signalling social status;

as parameters in statistics collection, especially in census-taking and the insurance industry;

addresses are the most accepted representation of a location.

Addresses may have drawbacks:

They are a non-standardised means of representing a location;

They do not contain the coordinates of the location they represent.

History

Until the advent of modern postal systems around the 18th-19th century, most houses and buildings were not numbered. Streets may have been named for landmarks, such as a city gate or market, or for the professions of their inhabitants. In many cities in Asia, most minor streets were never named. This is still the case today in much of Japan. A local postman would be familiar with the area and thus able to deliver mail, but as postal systems developed, it became necessary to number buildings to aid in mail delivery.

House numbering or naming

In most English-speaking countries, the usual method of house numbering is an alternating numbering scheme progressing in one direction along a street, with odd numbers on one side (often west or south or the left-hand side leading away from a main road) and even numbers on the other side, although there is significant variation on this basic pattern. Many older towns and cities in the UK have "up and down" numbering where the numbers progress sequentially along one side of the road, and then sequentially back down the other side. Cities in North America, particularly those planned on a grid plan, often incorporate block numbers, quadrants (explained below), and cardinal directions into their street numbers, so that in many such cities, addresses roughly follow a Cartesian coordinate system. Some other cities around the world have their own schemes.

Although house numbering is the principal identification scheme in many parts of the world, it is also common for houses in the United Kingdom and Ireland to be identified by name, rather than number, especially in villages. In these cases, the street name will usually follow the house name. Such an address might read: "Smith Cottage, Frog Lane, Barchester, Barsetshire, BZ9 9BA" or "Dunroamin, Emo, Co. Laois, Ireland" (fictional examples).

Quadrants

In cities with Cartesian-coordinate-based addressing systems, the streets that form the north-south and east-west dividing lines constitute the x and y axes of a Cartesian coordinate plane and thus divide the city into quadrants. The quadrants are typically identified in the street names, although the manner of doing so varies from city to city. For example, in one city, all streets in the northeast quadrant may have "NE" prefixed or suffixed to their street names, while in another, the intersection of North Calvert Street and East 27th Street can be only in the northeast quadrant.

Street-naming conventions

Street names may follow a variety of themes. In many North American cities, such as, San Francisco USA, and Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, streets are simply numbered sequentially across the street grid. Washington, D.C. has its numbered streets running north-south and lettered or alphabetically named streets running east-west, while diagonal avenues are typically named after states. In Salt Lake City, and many other Utah cities, streets are in a large grid and are numbered in increments of 100 based on their location relative to the center of the city in blocks. A similar system is in use in Detroit with the Mile Road System. 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.

Postal codes

Postal codes are a relatively recent development in addressing, designed to speed the sorting and processing of mail by assigning unique numeric or alphanumeric codes to each geographical locality.

Postal alternatives to physical addresses

For privacy and other purposes, postal services have made it possible to receive mail without revealing one's physical address or even having a fixed physical address. Examples are post office boxes, service addresses and poste restante (general delivery).

Address format

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. For example:

In English-speaking countries, the postal code usually comes last. In much of Europe, the code precedes the town name, thus: "1010 Lausanne". Often, the country code is still placed in front of the postal code: "CH-1010 Lausanne". However, this is no longer demanded by postal authorities and has even been forbidden in certain countries.

If a house number is provided, it is written on the same line as the street name; a house name is written on the previous line. When addresses are written inline, line breaks are replaced by commas. Conventions on the placing of house numbers differ: either before or after the street name. Similarly, there are differences in the placement of postal codes: in the UK, they are written on a separate line at the end of the address; in Australia, Canada and the United States, they usually appear immediately after the state or province, on the same line; in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and The Netherlands they appear before the city, on the same line.

East Asian addressing systems, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean addressing systems, when written in their native scripts, use the opposite ordering, starting with the province/prefecture, ending with the addressee. However both have the same order as western countries when written in the Latin alphabet. The Hungarian system also goes from large to small units, except the name of the addressee is put into the first line.

The Universal Postal Convention strongly recommends the following:

"The addressee’s address shall be worded in a precise and complete manner. It shall be written very legibly in roman letters and arabic numerals. If other letters and numerals are used in the country of destination, it shall be recommended that the address be given also in these letters and numerals. The name of the place of destination and the name of the country of destination shall be written in capital letters together with the correct postcode number or delivery zone number or post office box number, if any. The name of the country of destination shall be written preferably in the language of the country of origin. To avoid any difficulty in the countries of transit, it is desirable for the name of the country of destination to be added in an internationally known language. Designated operators may recommend that, on items addressed to countries where the recommended position of the postcode is in front of the name of the location of destination, the postcode should be preceded by the EN ISO 3166–1 Alpha 2 country code followed by a hyphen. This shall in no way detract from the requirement for the name of the destination country to be printed in full."

Argentina

In Argentina, an address must be mailed this way:

The postal code has been changed from a four digit format to an eight digit format, which is shown in the example. The new format adds a district or province letter code at the beginning, which allows it to be identified. As the system has been changed recently, the four digit format can still be used: in that case it is necessary to add the name of the province or district.

Australia

In common with the rest of the English-speaking world, addresses in Australia put the street number—which may be a range—before the street name, and the placename before the postcode. Unlike addresses in most other comparable places, the city is not included in the address, but rather a much more fine-grained locality is used, usually referred to in Australia as a suburb or town – although these words are understood in a different way than in other countries. Because the suburb or town serves to locate the street or delivery type, the postcode serves only as routing information rather than to distinguish previous other parts of an address. As an example, there are around 8000 localities in Victoria (cf. List of localities in Victoria (Australia) and List of Melbourne suburbs), yet around 700 unique geographic postcodes. For certain large volume receivers or post offices, the "locality" may be an institution or street name. It is always considered incorrect to include the city or metropolis name in an address (unless this happens to be the name of the suburb), and doing so may delay delivery.

Australia Post recommends that the last line of the address should be set in capital letters. In Australia, subunits are essential and should be separated from the street by two spaces; apartments, flats and units are typically separated with a forward slash instead. As in the US, the state/territory is crucial information as many placenames are reused in different states/territories; it is usually separated from the suburb with two spaces and abbreviated. In printed matter, the postcode follows after two spaces; in handwritten matter, the postcode should be written in the boxes provided.

In addition to PO Boxes, other delivery types (which are typically abbreviated) may include:

Australian Post Addressing Guidelines

Austria

In Austria, the address is generally formatted as follows:

The postal code always consists of four digits.

Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, the format used for rural and urban addresses is different.

Urban Addresses

The postal code always consists of four digits.

Rural Addresses

Belarus

Some neighbourhoods may be planned in such a way that some, or most, apartment buildings don't face a named street. In this case, a number of expedients can be used. In older neighbourhoods, a "main" building may have the same number as one or more "subsidiary" buildings accessible via driveways behind the main building. They will be addressed as vul. Lenina, d. 123 (123 Lenin St) An address may also cover one or more subsidiary buildings behind the main building, addressed as vul. Lenina, d. 123, bud. 2 (123 Lenin St, unit 2, where bud. (abbreviation for будынак, budynak) means a '(subsidiary) building'). In newer areas with more regular street plans, apartment buildings that don't face a named street may be designated with Cyrillic letters appended to the building number, e.g. 123-а, 123-б, etc., in Cyrillic alphabetical order.

In some microraion neighbourhoods, with few, if any, buildings facing named streets, the name (or more likely number of the microraion (planned housing development)) would be used instead of the street name; thus someone may live at 4-th microrayon, d. 123, kv. 56, i.e. 123 - 4th Microraion, apt. 56.

Source: Belposhta

Belgium

The address starts with the most specific information (addressee individual identification) and ends with the most general information (postcode and town for domestic mail or country for cross border mail.) Spatial information of a physical address (including building, wing, stairwell, floor and door) may be useful for internal path of delivery, but is not allowed in the delivery point location line (i.e. the line containing street, number and box number). If needed, this information will appear on a line above the delivery point location line.

The street number is placed after the thoroughfare name (unlike in France), separated by a space. Separators such as punctuation (point, comma or other signs) or ‘n°’, or ‘nr’ are not allowed. Extension designation (box numbers), if present, appears in the delivery point location line, preceded by the word for "box" (bus in Dutch, bte in French). Symbols such as b, Bt, #, -, / are not allowed as separators between the street number element and the box number element.

Example of a correctly formatted postal address:

The Belgian addressing guidelines are registered with the Universal Postal Union (UPU and see the link http://www.upu.int/en/activities/addressing/postal-addressing-systems-in-member-countries.html). These guidelines indicate exactly how to combine the various address components in order to obtain a correctly formatted postal address.

The complete set of addressing guidelines can be found on the website of the Belgian postal operator (bpost). The correct representation of an address is not limited to the correct structure of address components but also relates to the content of addresses and their position on envelopes (see http://www.bpost.be/site/fr/residential/letters-cards/send/best_practices.html (in French)).

It is also possible to validate a Belgian postal address on bpost's website and to receive feedback on the content and the format of an address. More information can be found on bpost's website (see http://www.bpost.be/validationadresse/ (in French)).

Brazil

In Brazil, an address must be mailed this way:

States can have their name written entirely, abbreviated in some way, or totally abbreviated to two letters (SP = São Paulo, RJ = Rio de Janeiro, etc.).

Only towns with 60,000 inhabitants and above have postal codes individualized for streets, roads, avenues, etc. One way can have several postal codes (by odd/even numbers side or by segment). These postcodes range from -000 to -899. Other towns have only a generic postcode with the suffix -000. Recipients of bulk mail (large companies, condos, etc.) have specific postcodes, with a suffix ranging from -900 to -959. P.O. boxes are mailed to Correios offices, with suffixes ranging from -970 to -979. Some rural settlements have communitarian postboxes with suffix -990.

Canada

Addressing guidelines can differ between English- and French-speaking populations in Canada. Here are some formatting rules that are used in common:

Cardinal directions like North, North West, etc. can be abbreviated in either English or French, and appear after the street name. Ordinal numbered streets (e.g. 6th, 2nd) can be written in either English or French.

Postal codes come in a letter-number-letter-space-number-letter-number format, for example: A1A 1A1. There should be two spaces between the province abbreviation and the postal code.

If sending a parcel from outside Canada, the word "CANADA" must be placed at the very bottom.

If there is an apartment number it should be written before the house number and separated by a hyphen. The postal code is then separated by two spaces and should be written on the same line as the city and province.

See the example below for a comparison of the English and French address formats.

English (from Canada Post):

NICOLE MARTIN 123 SHERBROOKE ST TORONTO ON L3R 9P6

French (from OQLF):

Monsieur Jean-Pierre Lamarre 101-3485, rue de la Montagne Montréal (Québec) H3G 2A6

See Canada Post's Addressing Guidelines for accurate, up-to-date information on the addressing guidelines most commonly used in Canada.

See the Office québécois de la langue française's Adressage webpage (in French only) for more information about how to write an address according to guidelines used in Quebec and other French-speaking areas.

Chile

Chilean urban addresses require only the street name, house number, apartment number (if necessary) and municipality; however, more information is frequently included, such as neighbourhood, city, region. Postal codes are rarely included by people. All postal codes have seven digits, the first three indicating the municipality, the next four identifying a block or in large and scarcely populated areas a quadrant within the municipal territory.

The territories of most of the larger cities comprise several adjacent municipalities, so it is important to mention it.

Smaller cities often consist of only one municipality with several unofficial neighbourhoods that are usually mentioned even for official addressing purposes.

Several large and mostly rural municipalities contain more than one small town, in such cases, the recipient address must mention either the town, the postal code or both.

China

The Postal area when written in Chinese characters (preferably Simplified Chinese characters), has the order of the largest unit first, ending with the addressee, i.e. country, province, municipality, town, street or road, building name, floor/level, house/flat number, company name, addressee. This is the most common language used when posting within China.

The whole address is commonly written as a string of characters with no particular format regarding where a new line would start, similar to one long sentence, with any new lines appearing depending on the space available on the envelope. Generally, the district is omitted when posting within China.

Croatia

Croatia uses five-digit postal code numbers. The Croatian postal service recommends using 2-letter ISO country codes as prefixes before international and domestic postal codes, though the practice is not mandatory.

Czech Republic

Common format in Czech Republic:

Postal codes are in the format "### ##" (i.e. 158 00 = Prague 58) or "CZ-#####" (especially for international sendings). At pre-printed Czech postcards and envelopes, the postal code is filled into frames at separate last row. If the envelope doesn't have pre-printed rows and frames, the postal code should be before the town (or post office) name.

In private mails, the first line is usually constituted by a courtesy title (pan, paní, slečna, žák…) For private mails addressed to the workplace, the order is inverse (name + company) as in official mails (company + name).

The basic system of house numbering are conscription house numbers (čísla popisná, čp. or č. p.). In case of temporary or recreational house, an evidentional house number (číslo evidenční, ev. č. or če., or distinguished by initial 0 or E prefix) is used instead. In most of bigger cities and also in some towns and big villages with street names, there is double system of house numbering. As the first number is used the conscription or evidentional number (which corresponds to the chronologic order of cadastral registration of the house), as the second number (past a slash) is used the orientational number (orientační číslo, č. or., č. o.) which expresses position on the street. Sometimes, only one of the two numbers is used or the numbers are used in inversed order and it can be difficult to distinguish which number is which. Generally, orientation numbers (if exists) are preferred for mail services.

Ex.: Josef Novák, Brněnská 2256/16, 123 07 Jitrnice

How to correctly label the consignment

Denmark

In Denmark, apartment buildings will usually have two or three apartments per floor. Thus, if the addressee lives in an apartment, the address should contain the floor they live on, and a side (t.v., mf. or t.h., meaning "to the left", "in the middle" and "to the right", respectively) or an alphanumeric character (1,2,3... or A,B,C...= starting from left seen from the top most step just before the floor).

Also, for postal codes 2000 and up, there is a 1:1 relationship between postal code and town.

Finland

If a person's name is written before the company name in the address field of a letter, then that person is considered the recipient. In this case, no other employee is allowed to open the letter but the indicated recipient. If the company name is before the person's name, then the company is the recipient and any employee is allowed to open the letter.

* apartment number can formulated as "as 5" (as = asunto, 'apartment' in English) or as "C 55" (the letter A, B, C ... indicates the correct staircase in apartment blocks with several entrances)

Finland uses a five-digit postal code. Note that some of the larger companies and organizations have their own postal codes.

France

In France, the address is generally formatted as follows:

The postal code always consists of five digits.

Organisations, government agencies, and companies which receive large amounts of mail often have a special "CEDEX" address which goes after the last line (for instance, "75001 PARIS CEDEX").

Germany

In Germany, the address is generally formatted as follows:

The postal code always consists of five digits.

Organizations that receive large amounts of mail may be assigned a bulk customer postal code. These are different from regular postal codes in that they do not have a street name line. Some bulk customer postal codes are shared between several organizations.

There are a few places that have house numbers but no street names (e.g. Baltrum) as well as addresses that have a street name but no house number.

Some (but not all) private post companies are also able to deliver to Deutsche Post-operated P.O. boxes.

Post codes follow the structure of DPAG's mail routing, not administrative boundaries.

Each post code is used exclusively for street addresses, P.O. boxes or bulk recipients.

Sub-building information, such as apartment numbers, is rarely used - a name on the post box is usually the only method of identification of an addressee within a building.

Greece

Hellenic Post recommends the following format for Greek addresses:

The most widespread format, shown above, gives at the last line the recipient's five-digit post code (with a single space between the third and fourth digits) and the name of the town or village that is the base of a post office, in capital letters and separated from the postcode by two spaces. When sending mail abroad, or when sending mail from abroad to Greece, Hellenic Post recommends the following format:

Like mail for delivery within the country, mail sent from abroad must contain the postcode in the same manner, but the postcode must be preceded by the international prefix of the country of delivery (for Greece, GR). Below the destination, the country of delivery must be written in capital letters, either in English or French (for Greece, GRÈCE or GREECE).

Hong Kong

The official languages of Hong Kong are English and Cantonese Chinese. For domestic mail within Hong Kong, the address may be written entirely in either English or Chinese. For overseas mail going out from Hong Kong, the address may be written in the language of the destination country, provided that the city name and the country name are in English. However, for an overseas mail from Hong Kong to China, Macao, Taiwan or Singapore, the address may be written entirely in Chinese. While traditional Chinese characters are commonly used in Hong Kong, simplified Chinese characters are also understood by Hong Kong's postmen. Note that Hong Kong does not use any postal codes, though many rural properties have a property identification code, e.g. HKT-12345.

An address written in English should begin with the smallest unit and end with the largest unit, as in the following example for a domestic mail within Hong Kong.

An address written in Chinese should begin with the largest unit and end with the smallest unit, as in the following example for a piece of domestic mail within Hong Kong. Traditional Chinese characters are used in this example.

For mail to Hong Kong from overseas, "Hong Kong" should be added at the end of an address written in English, and "香港" should be added at the beginning of an address written in Chinese.

Hungary

In Hungarian mail addresses, the town name precedes the street address.

The postal code consists of four digits.

India

The format used for rural and urban addresses is different.

Rural Addresses

Urban Addresses

The state is optional in both cases, but is typically used.

Indonesia

In Indonesia, the address format is like this:

Generally "Jalan" or "Jl." means 'street' and should go before the street name, e.g. Jalan Cemara. More info about Indonesia administrative divisions see Administrative divisions of Indonesia.

Iran

Postal addresses in Iran has a standard which should be used by mail or parcel senders. This standard is registered and qualified in Universal Postal Union (UPU). According to the below table, Iran has 4 types of standard address:

Ireland

In July 2015 Ireland introduced Eircodes, a seven digit alphanumeric code, consisting of a 3 character routing key and a 4 character unique identifier for the property. Example A65 F4E2. Up until the introduction of Eircode's Dublin was the only county with a form of postal district identifier, these have been incorporated into the Eircode scheme; example Dublin 2 is routing code D02.

Rural addresses are specified by the county, nearest post town, and the townland. Urban addresses are specified by county, city or town name, street name, house number, and apartment or flat number where relevant. A house name may be used instead of a number. The Eircode is appended to the bottom of the address.

Israel

Basic format

Example of common address with apartment number

Example of common address with building entrance and apartment number

Or

Italy

An internal address, in Italy, must be composed of three to five rows. Up to six rows can be used if the mail is sent abroad:

Line ordering may not be changed.

Japan

A Japanese postal address, when written in Japanese phonetic and Chinese characters, starts with the largest geographical division, continues with progressively smallers subdivisions before ending with the addressee, i.e. country, prefecture, town, chōme, banchi, building number, building name, floor number, company name, addressee. This is the most common addressing format used when mailing within Japan. 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 following example. Macrons (as on ō and ū) may be omitted.

Japanese-style envelopes are vertically aligned and the address is written from top to bottom, then right to left. Western-style envelopes are horizontally aligned and the address is written from left to right, top to bottom.

South Korea

South Korea uses a system similar to Western addressing, but previously used a system similar to Japanese addressing. South Korean addresses start with the largest unit (country, province), like those other East Asian countries.

Latvia

In Latvia, the address in generally formatted as follows:

Notes:

Every address element should be written on a separate line, starting with the more detailed element.

In Latvian, addressee’s name should be provided in dative, i.g., “Andrim Liepam”. There are two generally accepted official salutation forms you can use in front of the addressee's name: "A.god." (with a man's name) or "Ļ.cien." (with a man's or woman's name).

Indicate a full street name, house and flat number (if applicable). Separate house and flat number with a hyphen.

It is allowed to use abbreviation of parish ("pag." - abbreviation of "pagasts") and amalgamated municipality ("nov." - abbreviation of "novads").

The postal code consists of two capital letters (LV) and four digits separated with a hyphen.

For cross-border mail after the postal code you need to indicate the country of destination in block letters.

Further references: Latvijas Pasts

Macau

The official languages of Macau are Portuguese and Cantonese. For domestic mail within Macau, the address may be written entirely in either Portuguese or Chinese. For overseas mail going out from Macau, the address may be written in the language of the destination country, provided that the city name and the country name are in English. However, for an overseas mail from Macau to China, Hong Kong, Taiwan or Singapore, the address may be written entirely in Chinese. While traditional Chinese characters are commonly used in Macau, simplified Chinese characters are also understood by Macau's postmen. Note that Macau does not use any postal codes.

An address written in Portuguese should begin with the street name and end with the area in Macau, as in the following example for a domestic mail within Macau.

An address written in Chinese should begin with the largest unit and end with the smallest unit, as in the following example for a piece of domestic mail within Macau. Traditional Chinese characters are used in this example.

For mail to Macau from overseas, "Macau" should be added at the end of an address written in Portuguese, and "Macao" at the end of an address written in English; "澳門" should be added at the beginning of an address written in Chinese.

Malaysia

Pos Malaysia recommends the following formats:

Notes:

The Country line MALAYSIA is always omitted when mailing from within Malaysia.

The State line is strictly optional, the mailing system will not be affected if the State line is omitted.

The Post office/Mail centre field is the name of the town/city which post office/mail centre jurisdiction covers the mailing address, and in several cases, may not be the actual town/city which the address is geographically located.

It is recommended to have the Post office/Mail centre written in block letters, e.g. KUALA LUMPUR.

The postcode is always in the 5-digit format and must correspond to the respective post office / mail centre.

Pos Malaysia allows usage of P.O. Box for both residential and business addresses. Whenever a P.O. Box address is used, its respective postcode and post office/mail centre must be written on the last line of an address. If both postcodes are present (original and P.O. Box), mail will be sent to the P.O. Box on its first attempt.

Mexico

Correos de México recommends the following formats:

Netherlands

In the Netherlands, the address is generally formatted as follows:

The postal code is a unique street identifier, and always consists of four numbers followed by a space and then two capital letters. PostNL, which is appointed by the Dutch government to carry out the UPD (Dutch for Universal Postal Service), recommends putting two spaces between postal code and town. Also, the name of the town should be written in capitals.

Because the Dutch postal code uniquely identifies a street, a shortened format may also be used. This method only needs the postal code and the number. The ideal format for this method is the number after the postal code, meaning that this: '5631 AV 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.

New Zealand

New Zealand Post recommends the following format:

Note that no space or full stops exists between P and O in PO Box or R and D in RD. One should put only one space between the town/city and the postcode.

Note for Wellington metropolitan area, users should use the city name (i.e. Wellington, Lower Hutt, Upper Hutt, Porirua), not the metropolitan area name. 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).

One anomaly about this system is the Wellington Mail Centre, which is addressed as Wellington Mail Centre, Lower Hutt 5045, due to its location in the Lower Hutt suburb of Petone.

Norway

In Norway, the address is generally formatted as follows:

The postal code is unique, and is a four-digit number. The town name is always written in capital letters. It is also possible to replace the street name line with a PO box (e.g. Postboks 250).

Oman

In the Sultanate of Oman (2012), the address is formatted as follows:

Physical addresses only exist in major urban centers like those of Greater Muscat, Sohar, Salalah, Sur and Nizwa.

Pakistan

The format used in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Official Addresses

Peru

In Peru, addresses in the Metropolitan Area of Lima and Callao are generally formatted as follows:

Addresses elsewhere in the country are formatted as follows:

Philippines

Philippine follows Western conventions on addressing. Addresses in the Philippines either uses these formats.

Poland

In Poland, the address is generally formatted as follows:

ul. = Str (Street)
al. = Ave (Avenue)
pl. = Sq (Square, or Circus)

The abbreviation "m." (meaning "mieszkanie" = "flat") can be used instead of "/" before the flat number.

The postal code always consists of five digits separated with a hyphen (in the "XX-XXX" format), i.e. 00-486 (00=Warsaw); 20-486 (20=Lublin), etc. The first digit signifies the postal district, the second: the code zone, the third: the code sector, the fourth and fifth signify the post office and its area of operation. Usually the code is unique on the street level for cities and the town level for smaller towns and villages.

Portugal

Portuguese postal addresses is similar to continental European addresses:

Postal codes have the NNNN-NNN format. Street name and the number is traditionally separated by a comma, but nowadays CTT recommends just a blank space, or two blank spaces for extra clarity; this is to avoid OCR mistakes. The º after the number is the ordinal for floor number. Usually followed by "Esq." (Left, abbr from "Esquerdo") or "Dir." (Right, abbr from "Direito"), or an apartment letter (A, B, C, etc.). PO Boxes are called Apartado, followed by a number (e.g., Apartado 1001).

Qatar

Q-Post recommends the following format:

Not all of Qatar's roads and buildings are numbered, and Q-Post doesn't deliver to any street addresses.

Romania

In Romania, the address is generally formatted as follows:

Russia

The address must be written in Cyrillic or Latin alphabet, in usual format (from most specific to general).

Example:

Note: sub-region and region names are void if the city is Moscow or Saint Petersburg or if it is sub-region administrative center.

Some neighbourhoods may be planned in such a way that some, or most, apartment buildings face no named street. In this case, a number of expedients can be used. In older neighbourhoods, such as the historical center of Moscow, a "main" building may have the same number as one or more "subsidiary" buildings accessible via driveways behind the main building. They will be addressed as, for example, ul. Lenina, d. 123 (that is, 123 Lenin St). An address may also cover one or more subsidiary buildings behind the main building, addressed as ul. Lenina, d. 123, str. 2 (123 Lenin St, Unit 2, where str. (abbreviation for строение, stroenie) means a '(subsidiary) building'. In newer areas with more regular street plans, apartment buildings that face no named street may be designated with Cyrillic letters appended to the building number, such as 123-а, 123-б, etc., in alphabetic order.

In some microraion neighbourhoods, with few, if any, buildings facing named streets, the name (or more likely number of the microraion (planned housing development)) would be used instead of the street name; thus someone may live at 4-th microrayon, d. 123, kv. 56, that is, 123 - 4th Microraion, apt. 56.

Saudi Arabia

The address could be written in Arabic or English in the following format:

Serbia

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.

Singapore

SingPost recommends the following format for addresses:

Generally, the last line SINGAPORE is omitted when posting within the country. Addresses are usually written in the English language.

Slovakia

Common format in Slovakia:

Postal codes are in the format "### ##" (i.e. 851 01 = Bratislava 5).

Street numbers can be written as orientation numbers (related to street) or descriptive numbers (unique within the town) or as a combination separated by a slash (descriptive/orientation). Descriptive numbers are also used within small villages that do not have named streets.

If the delivery is intended exclusively for a specific person at a company site, the address should begin with the individual's name and the company name should follow. The standard format of addresses enables anyone at the company to receive the delivery.

http://www.posta.sk/potrebujem/spravne-napisat-adresu ("How to write addresses correctly", in Slovak, with pictures)

Slovenia

Slovenia uses a four-digit postal number. The first digit indicates the area:

1xxx for Ljubljana

2xxx for Maribor

3xxx for Celje

4xxx for Kranj

5xxx for Nova Gorica

6xxx for Koper

7xxx not used

8xxx for Novo mesto

9xxx for Murska Sobota

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).

Some cities have more than one post office, thus having multiple postcodes (usually in the x1xx format). For example, Ljubljana which has a "general" postcode 1000, also has additional ones, ranging from 1101 to 1133 (for some reason, however, omitting 1103 and 1105), Kamnik has 1240 and 1241, etc. Albeit they exist, it is not necessary to use them - usually the "general" postcodes are used.

^1 The abbreviations are: g. for gospod (Mr), ga. for gospa (Mrs), and gdč. for gospodična (Miss) - all always capitalized if in the beginning of the line.

^2 Numbers can have a suffix like A, B, C, etc.

^3 Common abbreviations are: c. for cesta (Street), and ul. for ulica (Road) - both always capitalised if in the beginning of the line.

^4 Bigger towns have special postcodes for PO Boxes in the xxx1 format, e.g. 1001 Ljubljana, 4001 Kranj.

^5 Big companies which receive large amounts of mail are designated their special postcodes in the x5xx format.

Spain

5ºB means 5th floor (Spanish: quinto), door B. Also, there may be door number, printed as 1ª (primera-first). Suffixes "o" and "a" derives from Spanish words piso (floor) which is masculine and puerta (door) which is feminine.

Some doors may be indicated with the abbreviations Izq. or Dcha., to indicate either left (Izquierda) or right (Derecha). Streets and avenues can be indicated with the abbreviations C. (for calle) and Av. (for avenida).

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka Post recommends the following format:

Sri Lanka uses a five-digit postal code. Generally, the last line SRI LANKA is omitted when posting within the country. Addresses are usually written in English and Sinhala.

Sweden

In Sweden, the address is generally formatted as follows:

The postal code is unique, and is always a five-digit number divided into groups of three and two (e.g. SE-414 73) with the prefix SE (ISO-code for Sweden) used only if sent from abroad. It is also possible to replace the street name line with a PO box (e.g. Box 51).

Switzerland

In Switzerland, the address is generally formatted as follows:

Taiwan

In Taiwan, addresses are regulated by the Department of Household Registration, while mails are handled by the Chunghwa Post. As a result, senders are required to write addresses in different formats in different situations.

Turkey

Turkish addressing system is as follows:

However, in rural areas with decidedly little population and with no street addresses, address format is much simpler:

Ukraine

Some neighbourhoods may be planned in such a way that some, or most, apartment buildings don't face a named street. In this case, a number of expedients can be used. In older neighbourhoods, a "main" building may have the same number as one or more "subsidiary" buildings accessible via driveways behind the main building. They will be addressed as vul. Bandery, d. 123 (123 Bandera St) An address may also cover one or more subsidiary buildings behind the main building, addressed as vul. Bandery, d. 123, bud. 2 (123 Bandera St, unit 2, where bud. (abbreviation for будинок, budynоk) means a '(subsidiary) building'). In newer areas with more regular street plans, apartment buildings that don't face a named street may be designated with Cyrillic letters appended to the building number, e.g. 123-а, 123-б, etc., in Cyrillic alphabetical order.

In some microraion neighbourhoods, with few, if any, buildings facing named streets, the name (or more likely number of the microraion (planned housing development)) would be used instead of the street name; thus someone may live at 4-th microrayon, bud. 123, kv. 56, i.e. 123 - 4th Microraion, apt. 56.

United Kingdom

The format specified by the postal operator Royal Mail is as follows:

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 specifies that post towns should be written in block capitals. Until 1996 a postal county (or permitted abbreviation) was required after the post town, unless it was a special post town, for example London. The post town and postcode should each be on a separate line. Historically, each line of an address ended with a comma and was indented from the previous line. 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. The postcode identifies, from left to right, increasingly smaller units of the postal delivery system. The first half of the postcode, known as the outward code, contains the postcode area and postcode district. The second half, known as the inward code, contains the postcode sector and postcode unit.

United States

Notes:

Traditionally, only the United States Postal Service (USPS) has been permitted to deliver to a P.O. Box. For this reason the recipient may choose to insert their physical (aka street) address as line two, expanding the complete address to four lines. Providing both allows a sender to ship via the USPS or via a private carrier. Some USPS facilities allow a user of a P.O. box to use the street address of the postal facility with the P.O. box number in the place of a suite number, in which case the user may receive packages from private carriers.

Mail will be delivered to the line immediately above the city, state, zip code line.

The state and type of street, e.g. Lane, is often abbreviated as shown in the PO standard.

The USPS discourages the use of all punctuation except the hyphen in ZIP+4 codes, slashes in fractional addresses, hyphenated street numbers, and periods in decimal addresses (e.g. the street name contains a decimal point). Hyphenated street numbers are common in the New York City borough of Queens, Hawaii, and Southern California; see house numbering.

Sometimes the name of the town required by United States Postal Service does not necessarily mean that address is within that city. See also ZIP codes and previous zoning lines.

Standards for variations on this format (apartment, rural route, general delivery, grid, P.O. Box and highway addresses) are covered in USPS Publication 28.

Puerto Rico addresses often include an urbanization or condominium name.

The USPS allows for Spanish conventions in addresses in Puerto Rico. The USPS prefers that territories be addressed in the standard domestic format (e.g. "San Juan PR 00907") but in practice territory names are sometimes written as if they are a country (e.g. "San Juan 00907 Puerto Rico").

International United States Department of State mail will use "DPO" as the city; military mail will use "APO" or "FPO". Both use "AE", "AP", or "AA" in place of the state code, depending on the continent.

Three independent countries with a Compact of Free Association with the U.S. (Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia) have their own domestic government-run mail services, but are integrated into the USPS addressing and ZIP code system. (See United States Postal Service#International services.)