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What is the minimal possible UK address?

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Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#341

Post by 1-more »

lxgr wrote: post #311
1-more wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's totally unambiguous for NYC, so I'm sure it would. I imagine they'd really prefer if you also included the ZIP. An annoyance in NYC is people not in Manhattan giving their address as NY, NY. A lot of street names repeat in other boroughs so you do in fact need to specify that that address is in Brooklyn if it's there. Queens is even more complicated since street names are not unique within the borough so…

A ZIP code (even just the 5-digit one) should disambiguate all of that though, right?

Yeah the city and state can be left off without any loss in precision if you include a ZIP. NYC has tiny ZIP code areas. Famously a few big buildings have their own, such as the Empire State Building (10018). Here's a list:

https://convene.com/catalyst/office/buildings-new-york-city-...

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#342

Post by miohtama »

jakewins wrote: post #9

Clearing out some old stuff from my grandparents, grandpa had at some point received a letter, from Stockholm, to their summer house in the woods addressed Thorvald The forest by

I once received a post card from my little sister as she was backpacking in Australia.

It only had my name and "Finland" as the address.

The card came with a special sticker "This item passed through the post office special mail resolution."

Sounds like someone had a boring day in a work in the post.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#343

Post by FearNotDaniel »

justincormack wrote: post #316
twic wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad's Uncle Bill was a quite well-known rugby player at one time, and received letters addressed just to "Bill $surname, Wales".

My uncle got mail to his name, Cambridge. They tried the University, which routed to him.

Ah Mr Cormack, good to hear you chiming in here... Reminds me of the time I successfully received a letter in Cambridge, addressed with only nine characters: my initials, the initials of my college, plus CB2 was enough to get it there.

Oh, and: mokas farakas!

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#344

Post by netsharc »

kolinko wrote: post #339
ce4 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case it was an embarrassing success story... my great uncles name was globally, or at least unique in Germany, i misspelled it, got the postcode wrong, forgot street and house number (sent from abroad)... and it arrived a month or so later. Boy got I laughed at. I'd rather wished it had disappeared. Thats was back in the 90's.

Some other embarassing success story. My gf bought a postcard in Czech Republic, filled it with my address in Warsaw, but forgot to buy poststamps. She didn't send the postcards and carried them to Warsaw. In Warsaw they fell out of her pocket on a street, or something like that. Still, they arrived in our post box. We still don't have an idea how and why :)

If it was already in Warsaw, it's possible some bored civilians found the postcard and decided to go to your address and put it in the mailbox...

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#345

Post by greenyoda »

polygotdomain wrote: post #274
TravisLS wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bunch of US zip codes are for PO Boxes only, so this seems to stand a strong chance of working, at least in those places.

Not only are their PO Box only zip codes, but there are also zip codes that are associated with various business and government entities. In those cases the USPS literally doesn't care what you put for the address bc they will hand over all the mail addressed to that zip code to the entity and let them handle it. The most famous example of this is the zip code 12345, which is actually for GE in Schenectady, NY.

The IRS also has some of these dedicated 5-digit ZIP codes. For example, 00501 is the IRS processing center in Holtsville, NY. (According to Wikipedia, this is also the lowest-number ZIP code currently in use in the US.)

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#346

Post by netsharc »

Karellen wrote: post #93
scrollaway wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GB is the correct ISO country code for Great Britain.

That always trips a lot of people up because .uk is the country-code top-level domain for Great Britain, and cctlds are assigned using the 2-letter ISO country code for that country. ...except for Great Britain, who were one of the first few other countries to be connected to the internet, and decided to use .uk before people realised that every country would need one, and using already-assigned ISO codes would be th…

Huh? The country is called "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", or the UK for short. Strictly speaking, if you talk about Great Britain, you're excluding Northern Ireland, but politically GB isn't a country...

Wikipedia says "Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean", although historically there was also the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#347

Post by jraph »

sseagull wrote: post #323
fakedang wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

There's the story from last year of a letter being delivered that only had a description of the person and where the person used to live: https://twitter.com/weefeargal/status/1479069076144234497

and also this letter / package addressed with broken encoding, decoded by the postal service.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#348

Post by tokamak-teapot »

lmm wrote: post #314
michaelt wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had one returned to sender since the post office wouldn't figure the missing town from the zip code! Well, here in the UK the norm (for non-commercial mail) is not to include a return address on the outside of the envelope. To return something to the sender, they have to open it and hope they find an address inside. Much easier to just deliver it!

> Well, here in the UK the norm (for non-commercial mail) is not to include a return address on the outside of the envelope. Huh? I was always taught to put your address on the back.

Yes, I always put my address on the back of parcels (who sends letters?).

I also always use the short form: house number and post code.

Is this a good method? No idea. Decades of sending parcels. None failed to arrive, so no attempts to return to sender.

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