Standardized Addressing

Education Update Standardized Address By standardizing your customer/patient addresses according the USPS you optimize the processing capability of mail. In other words – it gets to its location faster. Help us help you by following these simple tips and tricks! Formatting: Use upper case letters only for better readability. Best fonts to use are Arial or Tahoma and should be no less than 10pt in size. Do not use punctuation – the exception being a ½ address or Hawaiian address (Example: 123 ½ S Main St). No double spaces, asterisk *, comma, period. parentheses (), quotations “”, colons:, semicolons;, apostrophes’, hyphens -, at @, ampersand &, pound sign/hashtag/number sign # Apartment, suite, lot, unit should follow at the end of the address line (425 Flower Blvd Apt 72) – there should never be a pound sign/hashtag # in an address. If an address reads 425 Flower Blvd #72 – replace # with Apt If there is a physical address and a PO Box – the physical address goes in Address Line 1 and PO Box goes in Address Line 2 Do not abbreviate street names or city names – Cinn should not be used for Cincinnati or SR should not be used in place of State Route Only abbreviations should be those accepted by the USPS such as directional (North=N, Suite=Ste, etc.) Remove certain words that the post office deems unnecessary – such as and, space, in care of, et al, ie, of, by, for, also, attention, attn., gender words such as Mr, Miss and title words such as Dr, DDS Proper Formating First name / last name (also referred to as attention line) Company name Address 1 (needs to include APT # if it doesn’t fit – expand the field in the database_ Address 2 (only used for PO BOX) City State Zip The USPS software reads from the bottom line up – so in this example Acme Electronics is the legal residence at this address – PO Boxes are always preferred to street address if PO is available) Joe Doe Acme Electronics 123 Anytown Ave Apt 10 PO Box 123 Anywhere OH 44444 Abbreviations: The following is a list of abbreviations that are acceptable by the USPS Avenue AVE Circle CIR Court CT Cove CV Drive DR East E Lane LN Lot LOT North N Northeast NE Northwest NW Parkway PKWY Place PL Plaza PLZ Road RD South S Southeast SE Southwest SW Space SPC Street ST Suite STE Trailer TRLR Trail TRL Abbreviations that must be spelled out are: CR – County Road HWY – Highway PR – Private Road TR – Township Road TWP – Township Road