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Simplify state identification
- U.S. state abbreviations are standardized two-letter codes established by the United States Postal Service (USPS). These abbreviations are used for mail addressing, legal documentation, and other official purposes to simplify state identification.
www.geeksforgeeks.org/us-state-abbreviations/
So we use a system that's good enough: we pick the letters that most easily identify the state, whenever we can. For any state with two words, that's the first letter of each word: NY, NJ, SC, NC, WV, etc. For other states, we use as distinctive a two-letter combination as possible; TX works because it's the only state starting with a T that ...
On July 1, 1963, the Post Office Department introduced the five-digit ZIP Code. At the time, most addressing equipment could accommodate only 23 characters (including spaces) in the bottom line of the address. To make room for the ZIP Code, state names needed to be abbreviated.
The traditional abbreviations for U.S. states and territories, widely used in mailing addresses prior to the introduction of two-letter U.S. postal abbreviations, are still commonly used for other purposes (such as legal citation), and are still recognized (though discouraged) by the Postal Service.
NameStatus Of RegionIsoAnsiUS USA 840USUS-ALALStateUS-AKAKStateUS-AZAZ- When to Spell Out State Names
- When to Use State Abbreviations
- Why The Zip Code Abbreviations Were Developed
- U.S. Or Us For United States
As a general rule, the names of states should be spelled out when they appear in sentencesbut abbreviated in other contexts. For example: 1. "Our family had been transferred from Endicott, New York, to Raleigh, North Carolina. That was the word used by the people at IBM, transferred." (David Sedaris, "Naked," 1997) 2. "Both men were raised in the M...
In bibliographies, lists, charts where space is at a premium, reference lists, footnotes and endnotes, and in mailing addresses, state names are usually shortened using the postal abbreviation. This applies to Chicago Manual of Style and the American psychological Association Style (APA). The two-letter, no-period state abbreviations recommended by...
Before 1963, there were no ZIP codes used on postal mail in the United States, and the U.S. Post Office preferred that people wrote out state and territory names completely to avoid confusion in sorting mail. In the early 1800s, it had established a standardized list of acceptable abbreviations, updating it in 1874. The list remained relatively unc...
Finally, United States may be abbreviated to U.S. when used as an adjective, but in formal writing, it's customarily spelled out as a noun. If you are following the Chicago Manual, you'll remove the periods to become USexcept in bibliography or reference entries pertaining to U.S. statutes, court cases, and other legal-context usages, which retain ...
- Richard Nordquist
May 7, 2021 · According to the US systems and tradition, all the states or territories are represented by abbreviations and codes for different purposes, including data processing and postal addresses. These codes and abbreviations have been used since the early 19th century.
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Each state has its own unique shortened name codes called state abbreviations used in written documents and mailing addresses. The state abbreviations are always in the same format: two letter abbreviations where both letters are uppercase and no periods or spaces between each letter.
