On 1 April 2010 10:55, Richard Weait <rich...@weait.com> wrote: > Wikipedia tells me that partial Canadian Postal codes are useful to > the post office[1]. In K1A 0B1 - K is the postal district, K1A is > the Forward Sortation Area and 0B1 is the Local Delivery Unit. Sounds > like "internal use only" to me. > > > Are there really countries where if you ask someone for their post code > > they will reply "do you mean my street post code or my district post > code"? > > In my experience, in Canada folks will only answer with their complete > 6-digit postal code (If they know it at all.) > > In the US, Zip Codes changed from 5 numeric digits to 9 numeric digits > in 1983[2]. In my experience I am much more likely to hear just the > old 5-digit Zip Code rather than the Zip+four that could be considered > the official zip code in conversation. > > [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_codes_in_Canada > [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_codes > > In the UK it is a similar post code structure as Canada of AB12 3CD. Everyone would give the full postal code as their address. But some websites and surveys ask for just the first half, as this is good for statistics but keeps enough privacy. A few times I have written letters (to friends as a kid) where I forgot the postcode and put "AB12 ???", but they should get it from the full address, Royal Mail is just anal that you put the post code on.
If you're clever (or find it fun), you can recognise the place from the first two letters. TW = near the Twickenham sorting office. DH = Durham City (possibly covers the whole county actually). This map is interesting, especially with changing the layers to see different crowd sourced data sources. http://random.dev.openstreetmap.org/postcodes/ -- Gregory o...@livingwithdragons.com http://www.livingwithdragons.com
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