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How to Write an Address: A Complete Guide

Hannah Yang

Whenever you mail a letter, you need to write the address correctly. If you format the address incorrectly, your mail might get delivered to the wrong destination.

That’s just one situation in which you’ll need to know how to write an address. You may also need to write your address in the header of a resume, to fill out legal forms, and countless other situations.

If you’re trying to write an address, you’ve come to the right place. This article will give you a complete guide to formatting an address and provide examples of common address formats.

What Is an Address?

What are the address formats for mailing a letter, what are the address formats for specific types of addresses, should you use abbreviations in an address, address examples, conclusion on how to write an address.

An address consists of all the information that a mail carrier needs to identify a location.

Addresses contain some or all of the following pieces of information:

• The recipient’s name
• The organization’s name, if necessary
• Building number
• Street name
• Suite number, apartment number, or P.O. box number, if necessary
• City, town, or village
• State or territory
• Postal code

It’s important to include all the information that the post office needs to identify the correct location, without including any extraneous information. If you add any extraneous lines or words, it will be harder for others to figure out what the actual address is.

When you mail a letter in the US, you’ll need to include both the recipient’s address and the sender’s address. Let’s look at how to format each one.

Mailing Address Format

Whenever you mail a letter, you need to put the recipient’s address at the center of the envelope. This is where the postal courier will look to figure out where to deliver the letter to.

If you’re writing to a recipient in the US, you should include the following pieces of information, in this order:

• The recipient’s name on the first line. You can choose whether or not to include a title, such as Ms. or Dr.
• The recipient’s building number and street name. Also include a suite number, apartment number, or P.O. box number on the second line, if necessary
• The recipient's city, state, and postal code on the final line

The address should consist of three lines of text, one for each of the bullet points above.

You only need to include a suite or apartment number if you live in a building where multiple individuals or families share the same building number. That way, couriers can figure out which specific apartment to deliver the mail to.

When you write the postal code, you can write out either the five-digit ZIP code (e.g. 98052), or the five-digit ZIP code with the area-specific four-digit suffix (e.g. 98052-1134). Including your full postal code will help couriers deliver your package more quickly.

Return Address Format

The term “return address” refers to the address of the person sending a letter or package. The reason you need to include your own address on any letter or package you send is so the postal service knows where to return the mail if they’re unable to deliver it. You should place your return address on the upper left corner of the envelope.

If you live in the US, you should include the following pieces of information, in this order:

• Your name on the first line. You can choose whether or not to include a title, such as Ms. or Dr.
• Your building number and street name. Also include a suite number, apartment number, or P.O. box number on the second line, if necessary
• Your city, state, and postal code on the final line

Just like with the mailing address, the return address should be three lines of text, one for each of the bullet points above.

The guidelines to follow when writing an address often depends on the specific type of letter you’re writing. For example, if you’re sending an international letter to a country outside of the US, you may need to format your address differently.

Let’s look at some of these specific guidelines.

Business Address Format

When you’re sending mail to a business address, you may need to include some additional information that you wouldn’t include for a personal letter.

That’s because the courier may need to know the company name, as well as the name of the specific person within the company you’re writing to.

Here’s the information you need to include in a business address:

• The recipient’s name. You can precede this name with the word Attention or ATTN, followed by a colon. You can choose whether you want to include any relevant professional titles, such as Ph.D. or Esq.
• The name of the recipient’s company or organization
• The company’s building number and street name
• The company’s floor or suite number, if necessary
• The company’s city, state, and postal code

International Address Format

If you’re mailing a letter outside of the US, you’ll need to adhere to the format of the country you’re sending the letter to. That way, the postal service within that country will know where to go.

In general, these are the pieces of information you should include in an international address:

• The name of the recipient’s house, if their home has a specific name
• The recipient’s building number and street name, if their house does not have a specific name
• The recipient’s city, town, or village
• The recipient’s county
• The recipient’s postal code
• The recipient’s district, if necessary
• The recipient’s country

To be safe, you should always double-check the address format of the specific country you’re mailing to.

When you write your return address on international mail, you should format it the same way you usually would. In addition, you should include your own country at the bottom of the return address.

Resume Address Format

When you write a professional resume, you should include your address at the top of your resume. You can either include it in your header or add it in the top left corner.

The good news is that you should use the same format for writing an address in a resume that you would use for writing a letter. Include all the same information you would use for a return address.

One-Line Address Format

Sometimes, you may need to write an entire address in a single line of text.

In this case, you should include all the same information that you would include in a multi-line address. The only difference is that you’ll need to replace each line break with a comma when you write an address on one line.

Make sure to include a comma after each of these elements:

• The person’s name
• The street address
• The apartment number or suite

It’s perfectly acceptable to use abbreviations when writing an address—in fact, it’s often expected.

Here are some common abbreviations you should know:

• Apartment: Apt
• Boulevard: Blvd
• Parkway: Pkwy

You should also abbreviate all the US states with a two-letter code. For example, you would write CA for California or DE for Delaware.

To help you understand what a correctly formatted address should look like, we’ve included some examples you can refer to.

US Address Examples

Here’s an example of a domestic residential address in the US:

John Smith 5480 7th Ave San Francisco, CA 94112

Here’s an example of a US address with an apartment number:

Ms. Mary Green 2211 Edgewood St, Apt 2 Boston, MA 02124-1331

One-Line Address Examples

Here’s how you would write each of the above addresses on a single line:

John Smith, 5480 7th Ave, San Francisco, CA 94112 Ms. Mary Green, 2211 Edgewood St, Apt 2, Boston, MA, 02124-1331

Professional Address Examples

If you’re writing a business letter, don’t forget to include the organization’s name. Here’s an example:

Attn: Rachel Long, CEO The Greatest Writers’ Organization 780 English Avenue, Floor 8 Seattle, WA 90199

International Address Examples

Here’s an example of an address in Canada:

Jacob White 423 Second Street NE Montreal, QC H3Z 2Y7 Canada

(In this case, Montreal is the city, QC is the province, and H3Z 2Y7 is the postal code.)

Here’s an example of an address in Great Britain:

Harry Brown 87 Blackstone Street London EC1Y 8SY England

(In this case, London is the city, and EC17 8SY is the postal code.)

There you have it—a complete guide to writing an address correctly! Here’s a quick recap:

• An address should include everything a mail carrier needs to identify the recipient’s location
• It’s expected that you’ll use standard abbreviations, such as St for Street
• The guidelines may be different for international addresses, so always double-check each country’s guidelines

Lastly, make sure you write your address in clear and legible handwriting, so your mail can be delivered efficiently.

Be confident about grammar

Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

Hannah Yang is a speculative fiction writer who writes about all things strange and surreal. Her work has appeared in Analog Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, The Dark, and elsewhere, and two of her stories have been finalists for the Locus Award. Her favorite hobbies include watercolor painting, playing guitar, and rock climbing. You can follow her work on hannahyang.com, or subscribe to her newsletter for publication updates.

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If you follow a specific style guide, check to see how it recommends you write "ZIP code" because each one seems to have a different recommendation. Advice from three major style guides is below.

Today, we’re going to start with rules but go heavy on history at the end because what I thought would be an easy question to answer took me down an interesting rabbit hole and finally to an interview. It all started with this voicemail message.

“Hi, Grammar Girl. I actually work for the Federal Government, and I have a good enough command of writing and grammar that I am humorously referred to as the Grammar Guru. Recently we were writing a report and something came up. Some of the people on the committee thought we should capitalize ‘ZIP Code’ . . . and my take on that is that would be correct if you are referring to the specific thing — the postal system, that specific system — but if you’re talking about ‘zip code,’ it has become kind of a generic, like kleenex. I don’t listen to your podcast, so if you decide to use this, could you please answer it in your column. Thanks very much, Grammar Girl. I remain a faithful reader. Thanks again. Bye bye.”

Well, first, you should listen to the podcast, but the answer will be on the website as an article too. It’s extremely rare that material isn’t on both. But thank you for submitting the question as a voicemail so I can use in the podcast!

As I said, I thought this would be a quick answer: I’d look it up in a couple of style guides and bing-bam-boom, the end. But it wasn’t so simple, and I started finding interesting tidbits.

What Are ZIP Codes?

For our international readers, ZIP codes are an American thing. They’re the five digit codes at the very end of a mailing address (and if you want to be really detailed, you can add four more numbers to the end, and in my experience, doing that does help the post office deliver your mail a little faster). Other countries sometimes call the address codes “postal codes,” and some countries don’t have them at all. In the United States, we use just numbers, but some other countries also use letters.

Since our caller works for the U.S. government, and ZIP codes are a government thing, I checked  the US Printing Office style opens PDF file guide first. It recommends “ZIP Code.”

Associated Press style is similar: “ZIP code”—two words with “ZIP” in all caps—but it uses a lowercase C, and I was surprised it would deviate.

I looked a little deeper, and this made me laugh: Someone asked in the AP Stylebook Q&A section why AP style lowercases the word “code” when the source, the US Postal Service, capitalizes it, and the reply from the AP editors was “The U.S. Postal Service likes capitalization more than we do. We have different styles.” So there you go! They just like it better lowercase. That’s how styles work.

‘ZIP Code’ Was Trademarked

I didn’t know “ZIP” stands for “Zone Improvement Plan,” and the US Postal Service originally trademarked the phrase “ZIP Code.”

When I look at the listing on the US Patent and Trademark Office website , it looks like that trademark expired in 1997. On the other hand, the US Postal Service website still puts a “™” after “ZIP Code.” So maybe I missed something, or maybe whoever writes their website didn’t get the memo.

The AP Stylebook doesn’t put a trademark symbol after “ZIP code,” but it doesn’t recommend doing it for any trademark, so that doesn’t tell us anything about the trademark status.

I also found that the home furnishing company Wayfair holds the trademark for use of the term “zipcode” (all one word) on items like lamps, carpets, bedding, and furniture. How weird is that? So I searched the site to see if they had products with the word “zipcode” on them, but they don’t. Instead they have what looks like a house brand called Zipcode Design . So that makes more sense.

Check 3 Style Guides and Find 3 Different Ways to Write ‘ZIP Code’

The three style guides I checked each have a different way of writing “ZIP code.”

?  The US Government Publishing Office uses “ZIP Code.” ?  The AP Stylebook uses “ZIP code.” ?  The Chicago Manual of Style uses “zip code.”

‘Zip-code’ Is a Verb

You thought we were finished, but “zip-code” can also be a verb! Both, Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster list “zip-code” as a verb, and they keep it all lowercase and use a hyphen. It means to mark something with a ZIP code, as in “Be sure to zip-code that letter.”

The History of ZIP Codes

ZIP codes are much newer than I thought they would be.

The main 5-digit codes we use today in the United States were only introduced in 1963, and at first they were optional. I’m pretty sure that even today, some people don’t have one, and that’s when I realized that I know someone who knows all kinds of interesting things about the history of addresses. She’s Deirdre Mask, the author of the new book “ The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth & Power. ” Click the player at the top of the page to listen to the interview with Deirdre Mask (it starts around the 7:15 mark) or read a transcript of the interview .

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The postal code in English

(use of postal codes in english), table of contents – postal code, how is the postal code written in english.

Regarding the spelling and form of postal codes , there is a small difference between British and American English. Additionally, the term for designating the postal code is different: In American English, zip code is used; in British English, postcode and postal code are standard. Compare in detail:

North American states (USA) with their abbreviations

Abbreviations of states used by the postal service in the USA

Abbreviation	State (USA)
AL	Alabama
AK	Alaska
AR	Arkansas
AZ	Arizona
CA	California
CO	Colorado
CT	Connecticut
DE	Delaware
FL	Florida
GA	Georgia
HI	Hawaii
IA	Iowa
ID	Idaho
IL	Illinois
IN	Indiana
KS	Kansas
KY	Kentucky
LA	Louisiana
MA	Massachusetts
MD	Maryland
ME	Maine
MI	Michigan
MN	Minnesota
MO	Missouri
MS	Mississippi
MT	Montana
NC	North Carolina
ND	North Dakota
NE	Nebraska
NH	New Hampshire
NJ	New Jersey
NM	New Mexico
NV	Nevada
NY	New York
OH	Ohio
OK	Oklahoma
OR	Oregon
PA	Pennsylvania
RI	Rhode Island
SC	South Carolina
SD	South Dakota
TN	Tennessee
TX	Texas
UT	Utah
VA	Virginia
VT	Vermont
WA	Washington
WI	Wisconsin
WV	West Virginia
WY	Wyoming

Further explanations referring to the ‘Postal code’