Please us USA state names, not abbreviations

You are assuming that postal workers outside the USA, know the internal workings of the USA. Not everyone has the high education standards of US Citizens and the appropriate level of technology.

Assuming that the tech can read the writing

How do you think I came up with this suggestion.

For China Post, ISC in China only dispatches mail to a fixed ISC in the USA, no matter where it belongs actually.
Shanghai ISC only send mailbag (ordinary and registered) to ISC NEW YORK (USJFKA).
While EMS will be sent to ISC CHICAGO IL (USORDA).
ISC in China does not separate mail into different bags and sent it to different ISCs in the US since the route has been fixed by China Post.

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I’m certain that mail will be properly sorted by our postal system

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I don’t do this because of room; to my US receivers, I promise I’m not trying to get your postcard lost/sent to you late! I just write WAY too much and have to squeeeeze the address on there, sometimes :joy:

I like to preface my replies about USPS mail delivery with the fact that I delivered mail for 5 years (up till 2020), so I have a bit of insider information that I’ll pass along. The standard USPS format for addresses is capital, block letters, with little to no punctuation. This makes it easiest for the machine sorters. But, trust me, the “system” will accept tons of variations! Cursive writing is still common here; and the sorting machines can read 99% of them!

The first part of the zip code is going to get most mail in the right area. The last couple numbers of the zip code narrow it down to a neighborhood. The post office in my area is considered medium size and covers 2 towns and a total population of about 25,000, plus businesses. I think there are about 40-ish separate routes. And, there are 3 zip codes assigned; 32547 and 32548 for one town, and 32579 for the other. Anything the sorting machines can’t figure out gets popped out and the clerks and mail carriers take over. I had about 850 addresses on my route. Most were smaller apartment buildings with 10 to 20 individuals. It seems like a lot, but after a year or so, I could match about any partial name or address and get things to the right place and person!

Back to the original issue - it is NOT helpful nor normal to spell out the state name. USPS came out with the 2 letter, standard abbreviations for each state quite a while ago, and that’s what we use! Also, I’m pretty sure there’s only one country that goes by “USA.” Spelling out the state and USA and will NOT improve the chance of delivery.

And, finally, for Postcrossing, I always use the address however the person has it written out. I figure, they know if they’ve been receiving their postcards!

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@linos203 Your comment made me laugh! Most Americans, including me, can only pick out a handful of states! I’m lucky enough to have traveled to most of them, but I still would have a hard time identifying each on a map! Way back in school, we had to memorize each state and it’s capital, but that’s just a fuzzy memory now!:rofl:

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IME postal services aren’t super strict about addresses being right. I’ve sent mail to “Deutschland” from the US before and it arrives just as fast as sending mail to “Germany”. Deutsche Bahn has even mailed things to me multiple times with a German-format address like (example address):

Grand Army Plaza 10
US-11238 Brooklyn

instead of the correct address format:

10 Grand Army Plaza
Brooklyn, NY 11238
United States of America

They have all arrived in reasonable amounts of time

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If one really wanted to, the USPS is fine with writing out the entire state name. The machines should do just fine. The problem is manual sorting and the clerk literally may only have a second to read the address if at a busy plant (they are tied to an encoding machine). The two letter abbreviations were to designed to facilitate this process. If the clerk can’t catch it the first time it just gets kicked out and has to go around the queue all over again. While the ZIP Code and not the state would be the primary sorting method, just imagine a clerk who has a letter flashing by every second trying to decipher “Anywhere, Mississippi 12345” written in curly calligraphy in an odd shade of ink. In just a second and oh, hit the correct code too before the next illegible piece comes by.

I cannot find anything on the Australia Post website suggesting writing the entire state name when posting to the USA. And as the moderators have stated the UPU makes no mention either. Anyone who works in Australia Post have some inside information?

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So… With this logic…

Mrs Smith

98 Shirley Street
PIMPAMA QLD 4209

AUSTRALIA

Should become…

Mrs Smith

98 Shirley Street
PIMPAMA QUEENSLAND 4209

AUSTRALIA

On the PostNL website there is a document listing adres formats for various countries, this is what it says about the USA:

Which shows only the state abbreviation, not the name, so I would go by this.

So this is what UPU says about addresses in the United States: https://www.upu.int/UPU/media/upu/PostalEntitiesFiles/addressingUnit/usaEn.pdf

With an added screenshot:

So it says to use the two letters for the state as a standard. The way I see it, it is more important to type out all 9 digits of the postal code, instead of only the five digits most people use.

This is exactly what I was thinking too. I have read other topics from the OP and it seems to me they are just stating opinions without checking facts to make a discussion for no reason.

Thanks for giving the correct information with links.

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As an American I can guarantee everyone that this does not matter at all. Postal employees can find me with either Ohio or OH. The zip code is more important and has expanded from 5 digits to 9 (this plus 4 system began decades ago but most of us rarely use it for personal letters)

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In the UK we only need our house number and 7 digit postcode for it to arrive.