Because most mail is electronically scanned/sorted in the US, you can omit the city and state (though the post office will say no, you can't):
123 Main St.
97201
What is the minimal possible UK address?
281–290 of 406 posts
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#282Back in the 80s/90s I recall my parents getting carried away with a fad of marking valuable personal objects with house number and postcode (in the same fashion as in this post) so they could be identified if stolen. Apparently it's still a thing – https://www.immobilise.com/ – but I haven't personally heard about anyone doing it in decades. In my building, mail for all flats gets delivered to the same postbox, so we…
I remember my parents doing this too, I think there may have been some national campaign or promotion at the time to get the marking pens for free.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if a sufficiently famous, public, and unique name could get delivered. Would a letter simply addressed “Biden” make it to the White House?
I'll bet "Rishi Sunak" would get to 10 Downing Street. Although that's also an address with it's own postcode, so "SW1A 2AA" would also get there.
Many buildings in London actually have multiple postcodes. In general UK postcodes are granular enough that almost any combination of a name and code should make it, save for situations like several people with identical names living in flats that are fewer than N floors apart.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#284Olga was a famous doorkeeper at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. Students used to send her postcards from their journeys. It became so popular that it was enough to write "Olga, Sweden" for her to get the letters [0] (source in swedish). [0]: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Boberg
The Duke of Wellington's address, Apsley House, was famously: 1, London Funny story: Back in the 1950s, my father went on a rugby tour to the Soviet Union. One of his team mates wrote a postcard back to his mum with an address of: Mrs Williams, Clynderwen "Clynderwen" being the little village he came from. My dad said, "You can't just put that". He, none too bright, said "Why not? There's only one Clynderwen", and po…
> 6 months later, and about 5 1/2 after the end of the tour, it arrived. All over it were notes saying things like "Unknown in Hong Kong. Try Australia".
Man, that's some serious organizational ethic! If only both companies and people were as exact today...
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#285In the UK there are several single-line addresses that would probably work (10 Downing St, His Majesty the King, Blenheim Palace, Chatsworth) but they all use more characters than the example presented. Could the number of characters be reduced?
'HM' ?
Would a crown (U+1F451) count as a single character?
I wonder if writing down the unicode codepoint would work...
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#286In 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 It would get there! You might want to add a "Box" before the "1034" to be safe -- and to disambiguate between a house number, as in OP? (I'm not sure just a house number would ever work in the USA?) But it looks cooler with just two numbers. Especially…
I worked with someone who painted and mailed a bunch of bagels. As in the bagels you toast and eat. As in a stamp stuck onto a painted bagel with the address written with marker. They all got to their destinations.
My parents went to Hawaii a couple of years ago and mailed a coconut to my house. Turns out that it's a whole thing:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/you-can-mail-coconut-a...
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#287In 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 It would get there! You might want to add a "Box" before the "1034" to be safe -- and to disambiguate between a house number, as in OP? (I'm not sure just a house number would ever work in the USA?) But it looks cooler with just two numbers. Especially…
Its potentially possible for individuals/orgs too.
The post office standard mentions something to the effect "If a firm name is assigned a unique ZIP+4 then it must be used" (rather than just the zip code).
Which implies its possible for a "firm" to get their own zip+4 number and that by itself is probably sufficient for the automated mailing system to identify the recipient.
The ZIP+4 is intended to be a redundant checksum against the name+address (which doesn't strictly require a zip code for handwritten/non bulk mail), so presumably a bunch of "hacks" work in the post office system as well.
AKA, for a lot of rural/etc places just a name and a basic zip code probably works/etc.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#288They can be shorter. "I am sure some postcodes only contain one house number, in which case you could use just the postcode as your address, which would be quite cool. " Indeed. There are 55,540 full postcodes in England and Wales that contain only one household. This would mean you could just send the letter to the postcode itself. Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...
Some very large organisations have also their own postcode.
For example, if you want to write to HMRC about your self-assessment the address is: BX9 1AS, and that's it.
Edit: moreover, BX is the non-geographic code, whereas 'normal' postcode start with a geographic code, which is usually an abbreviation of the town.
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#289Some brilliant examples of postal detective work in Ireland documented here https://www.quora.com/Can-you-send-mail-in-Ireland-with-the-... . eg Petra Kindler and Donal Moore Unfortunately I forgot the street name but it's near a street named *Cul de Sac* The beautiful city of Waterford, well known for its kindly postmen IRELAND
My favourite was the one addressed simply “Gobshites”, with no further details. It was successfully and correctly delivered to the Dáil (the lower house of the Irish parliament). ETA: source —- https://www.her.ie/amp/lol/unbelievable-this-letter-made-it-...
I wonder how they determined it was for that pack of gobshites, and not the band[1]. Penmanship? Cheery stamp?
Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?
#290I grew up in a small town with a population of about 2,000. I remember one time I signed up for a website with my real name and city, but didn't want to give my home address so just made up "123 Main St" (my town doesn't have a "Main St"). Sure enough, they sent a spam postcard, addressed to my name @ 123 Main St. The post office, being friendly and knowing who all the residents are, still delivered it to my home, al…
In the UK we have postcodes. These have the same function as a US zip code. However, they can appear a bit random here and have a resolution of about three or four properties.
>In the UK we have postcodes. These have the same function as a US zip code.
The USPS wanted everyone to know about zip codes and provided a musical tutorial[0] as to why zip codes were a good idea...