Reminds me that https://what3words.com/ exists, it's too bad a system like this couldn't be implemented globally. I'd love to write ///rich.soup.noble on an envelope and have it delivered
What is the minimal possible UK address?
71–80 of 406 posts
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#72I wonder what is the shortest adress that works in Germany. Central Mannheim has streets (or rather squares) which are identified by a combination of a single letter and a single digit. This is then followed by the number of the house. But sometimes a building occupies a whole square. So for example
E5
68159 Mannheim
One should get away with using the number plate abbriviation "MA" for "Mannheim". So something like
H5
68159 MA
H5
68159
And perhaps even
H5
MA
H5
Another possibility for short addresses is that some companies or agencies in Germany have their own postal code. So just writing their five-digit-code on the envelope should suffice.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
GB is the correct ISO country code for Great Britain.
I would not be confident in postal systems routing letters based on ISO country codes. If you send your letter in Tennessee with AR at the bottom of it, it's going to Arkansas or nowhere, not Argentina.
Yes, there are actually standard postal country names assigned jointly by the country concerned and UPU (the organisation that manages how mail works globally). For example, the correct country name for ISO GB is "UNITED KINGDOM" (https://www.upu.int/UPU/media/upu/PostalEntitiesFiles/addres...)
Pedantic: actually, there are (up to) two valid postal country names: the English one (UNITED KINGDOM) and the French one (ROYAUME-UNI, https://www.upu.int/UPU/media/upu/PostalEntitiesFiles/addres...). This is due to historical reasons: (jointly) Britain and the US (which use English) were the most advanced in postal services but the diplomatic language at the time is French.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#74In Ireland you can just describe the person instead of the actual address and it'll get delivered https://twitter.com/weefeargal/status/1479069076144234497?s=...
While this was in Ireland, it's worth specifying that Royal Mail was responsible for this wholesome delivery as it was in Northern Ireland (currently in the UK), so it's not immediately obvious that this applies to the Republic as well.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#75Reminds me of this wonderful post, primarily UK oriented. Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a...
I'll add one: An address with an apartment letter may not be the same building as the same address without the apartment letter. My address is something like "Bijvorbeeldstraat 3B". Next door, in a separate building, is "Bijvoorbeeld 3". Most services (including the national population register!) insist that I enter my address as "Bijvoorbeeldstraat 3 bus B", which results in (for everybody except the national post) coming to "Bijvoorbeeldstraat 3" and my deliveries getting marked as "nobody home".
In particular, I'm looking at you Uber Eats/Deliveroo. I get whinged at by roughly half the delivery drivers who come to deliver my food for putting in the wrong address, despite having delivery instructions that include a description of the correct door.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#76I had a friend who was a farmer in a rural part of Britain and you could send him a letter by just writing First Name, Last Name, County and he would get the letter as his family had been farming that land for hundreds of years and the postal service could figure it out somehow. I also remember an art project where they put the address in the form of various different kinds of puzzles and had letters successfully del…
This is the case in France, the official date is the one on the stamp, not the one of the reception day.
This is called "cachet de la Poste faisant foi"
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#77In Ireland you can just describe the person instead of the actual address and it'll get delivered https://twitter.com/weefeargal/status/1479069076144234497?s=...
While this was in Ireland, it's worth specifying that Royal Mail was responsible for this wholesome delivery as it was in Northern Ireland (currently in the UK), so it's not immediately obvious that this applies to the Republic as well.
Incidentally the Republic of Ireland didn't have a nationwide postcode system until 2015.
Prior to that I used to address letters to a relative there as Name, Village, County and they were delivered! Turned out there were two people of the same name in the village but the postie saw the UK-originating stamp on the letter and ,delivered to the applicable one.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although An Post don't use EirCodes, so I wonder if an EirCode alone is enough? Source: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/an-post-staff-fail-to-use...
Interesting large delivery companies do not use EirCode either. It was not primarily designed for deliveries but taxation. It's still annoys me to this day. The Irish government had a problem administering Property tax and the TV Licence due to data sharing restrictions between departments. Unique Eircodes per property was the solution. This was explicitly stated by the Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte at the tim…
> Due to their random nature they are also less useful to emergency services.
That's not my experience at all. They've been a revolution in address resolution at NEOC in my experience, and they're used for navigation on nearly every emergency call.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#79Once lived in a Canadian house that had its own postal code.
Was always careful with any system that showed you the closest stores or whatever by postal code.
I think I only tried to send one envelope with just the postal code and it didn’t make it!
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#80In the US, someone I know who had a Post Office box liked writing simply `box-number zip-code` as their address.
It worked. Eg, if you wrote on an envelope:
1034
21240
But it looks cooler with just two numbers. Especially it did 20 years ago when my friend did it. Very futuristic cyberpunk. Maybe a square glyph for "box" would be good.