Postal code

Postcodes are generally clearly visible outside Australia Post offices.

A Dutch postcode book, dating from when postcodes were introduced to The Netherlands in 1978. Many countries provide the public with books in which a postcode can be looked up.

A postal code (known in various countries as a post code, postcode, or ZIP code) is a series of letters and/or digits appended to a postal address for the purpose of sorting mail. Once postal codes were introduced, other applications became possible.

In February 2005, 117 of the 190 member countries of the Universal Postal Union had postal code systems. Countries that do not have national systems include Ireland and Panama. Although Hong Kong and Macau are now Special Administrative Regions of China, each maintain their own long-established postal system, which does not utilize postal codes for domestic mail, and no postal codes are assigned to Hong Kong and Macau. Mails between Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China are treated as international.

Although postal codes are usually assigned to geographical areas, special codes are sometimes assigned to individual addresses or to institutions that receive large volumes of mail, such as government agencies and large commercial companies. One example is the French Cedex system.

Terms

There are a number of colloquial terms for postal code.

postal code

The general term is used directly in Canada.

postcode

This portmanteau is popular in many English-speaking countries.

ZIP code

The standard term in the United States and the Philippines; ZIP is an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan.

PIN code / pincode

The standard term in India; PIN is an acronym for Postal Index Number.

History

Postal codes were first introduced in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1932,^[1] but the system was abandoned in 1939. The next country to introduce postal codes was Germany in 1941, followed by Argentina in 1958, the United Kingdom in 1959 and United States in 1963.

Presentation

Character sets

The characters used in postal codes are

• The arabic numerals "0" to "9"
• Letters of the Basic Latin alphabet,
• space " ",
• hyphen "-"
• the Cyrillic letter У (for УКРАІНА = Ukraine).

The space and hyphen characters are merely a formatting aid, and thus can be omitted in most systems without losing information.

Reserved characters

Postal codes in the Netherlands originally did not use the letters 'F', 'I', 'O', 'Q', 'U' and 'Y' for technical reasons. But as almost all existing combinations are now used, these letters were allowed for new locations starting 2005. The letter combinations SS, SD and SA are not used for historical reasons.

Postal codes in Canada do not include the letters D, F, I, O, Q, or U, as the OCR equipment used in automated sorting could easily confuse them with other letters and digits. The letters W and Z are used, but are not currently used as the first letter.

Alphanumeric postal codes

Most postal code systems are numeric, only a few are alphanumeric (i.e. use both letters and digits). Alphanumeric systems can, given the same number of digits, encode many more locations. They are often more precise, as is the case in the United Kingdom or in the Netherlands, where a postal code corresponds to a street or even a building, meaning the post code and the number of the home/business is all that is needed for accurate delivery. However, there is no a priori reason why numeric postal codes cannot be equally precise, as illustrated by 9- and 11-digit codes in the United States. The independent nations using alphanumeric postal code systems are:

• Argentina (see table)
• Brunei (see table)
• Canada (see table)
• Jamaica (suspended in 2007 ^[2])
• Malta (see table)
• Netherlands (see table)
• United Kingdom (see table)
• Venezuela (look up at http://www.ipostel.gob.ve/nlinea/codigo_postal.php).

Country code prefixes

Usage of ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes was recommended to be used starting in 1994,^[3] but they have not become widely used. The European Committee for Standardization recommends use of ISO Alpha-2 codes for international postcodes^[3] and a UPU guide on international addressing states that "administrations may recommend" the use of ISO Alpha-2 codes.^[4]

Andorra, Ecuador, Latvia, Moldova, Slovenia use the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 as prefix in their postal codes.

In some countries (such as those of continental Europe, where a postcode format of four or five numeric digits is commonly used) the numeric postal code is sometimes prefixed with a country code to avoid confusion when sending international mail to or from that country. Recommendations by official bodies responsible for postal communications are confusing regarding this practice.^[3] For many years, licence plate codes — for instance "D-" for Germany or "F-" for France — were used, although this was not accepted by the Universal Postal Union (UPU).^[3]

Placement of the code

Postal services have their own formats and placement rules for postal codes. In most English-speaking countries, the postal code forms the last item of the address, following the city or town name, whereas in most continental European countries it precedes the name of the city or town.

When it follows the city it may be on the same line or on a new line.

In Japan, China, Korea and the Russian Federation, it is written more to the beginning of an address.

Geographic coverage

Postal codes are usually assigned to geographical areas. Sometimes codes are assigned to individual addresses or to institutions that receive large volumes of mail, e.g. government agencies or large commercial companies. One example is the French Cedex system.

Postal zone numbers

Before postal codes as described here were used, large cities were often divided into postal zones or postal districts, usually numbered from 1 upwards within each city. The newer postal code systems often incorporate the old zone numbers, as with London postal district numbers, for example. Ireland still uses postal district numbers in Dublin. In New Zealand, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch were divided into postal zones, but these fell into disuse, and have now become redundant as a result of a new postcode system being introduced.

Codes defined along administrative borders

Some postal code system, like the one of Ecuador and Costa Rica show an exact agreement with the hierarchy of the administrative country subdivisions.

Format of 6 digit numeric (8 digit alphanumeric) postal codes in Ecuador, introduced in December 2007: ECAABBCC

EC - ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code

AA - one of the 24 provinces of Ecuador (24 of 100 possible codes used = 24%)

BB - one of the 226 cantons of Ecuador (for AABB 226 of 10000 codes used , i.e. 2.26%. Three cantons are not in any province)

CC - one of the parishes of Ecuador.

Format of 5 digit numeric Postal codes in Costa Rica, introduced in 2007: ABBCC

A - one of the 7 provinces of Costa Rica (7 of 10 used, i.e. 70%)

BB - one of the 81 cantons of Costa Rica (81 of 1000 used, i.e. 8.1%)

CC - one of the districts of Costa Rica.

In Costa Rica these codes are also used by the National Institute for Statistics and Census (INSEC).

The first two digits of the postal codes in Turkey correspond to the provinces and each province has assigned only one number. They are the same for them as in ISO 3166-2:TR.

The first two digits of the postal codes in Vietnam indicate a province. Some provinces have one, other have several two digit numbers assigned. The numbers differ from the number used in ISO 3166-2:VN.

Codes defined close to administrative borders

In France the numeric code for the departments is used in the first digits of the postal code, except for the two departments in Corsica that have codes 2A and 2B and use 20 as postal code. Furthermore the codes are only the codes for the department in charge of delivery of the post, so it can be that a location in one department has a postal code starting with the number of a neighbouring department.

Codes defined indirectly to administrative borders

The first digit of the postal codes in the United States defines an area including several states. From the first three digits (with some exceptions), one can deduce the state.

Codes defined independently from administrative borders

The first two digits of the postal codes in Germany define areas independent from administrative regions. The coding space of the first digit is fully used (0-9); that of the first two combined is utilized to 89%, i.e., there are 89 postal zones defined. Zone 11 is non-geographic.

The UK post designed the postal codes in the United Kingdom mostly for efficient distribution. Nevertheless, with time, people associated codes with certain areas, leading certain people wanting or not wanting to have a certain code. See also postcode lottery.

Precision

Netherlands

Postal codes in the Netherlands are alphanumeric, consisting of four digits followed by a space and two letters (NNNN AA). Adding the house number to the postcode will identify the address, making the street name and town name redundant. For example: 2597 GV 75 will direct a postal delivery to the International School of The Hague.

USA

Other countries allow equally precise coding. For example, in the United States, the delivery point is typically derived from the last two digits of the house number and thus (at least theoretically) allows an unambiguous identification of every address in the country.

UK

Postcode-plus-house number is unique; for domestic properties the postcode generally refers to a road or part of a road (depending on its length).

States and overseas territories sharing a postal code system

Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man are part of the UK postcode system. They use the scheme AAN NAA, in which the first two letters are a unique code (GY, JE and IM respectively).

Seven British overseas territories use nine postal codes: three for Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, and one apiece for the others. Note that the former has two ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes, and the British Antarctic Territory has none, so the number of ISO codes is seven.

• Ascension Island: ASCN 1ZZ, ISO code: AC
• British Antarctic Territory: BIQQ 1ZZ
• British Indian Ocean Territory: BBND 1ZZ, ISO code: IO
• Falkland Islands: FIQQ 1ZZ, ISO code: FK
• Pitcairn Islands: PCRN 1ZZ, ISO code: PN
• Saint Helena STHL 1ZZ, ISO code: SH
• South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands: SIQQ 1ZZ, ISO code: GS
• Tristan da Cunha: TDCU 1ZZ, ISO code: included under SH
• Turks and Caicos Islands: TKCA 1ZZ, ISO code: TC

Two other British areas have their own systems, and use the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 prefix:

• Cayman Islands: KYN-NNNN*
• British Virgin Islands: VGNNNN.

French overseas territories use the five-digit French postal code system, each code starting with the three letter department identifier. Monaco also uses the French system.

Italy, San Marino and Vatican City use one system. Liechtenstein and Switzerland use one system. Slovakia and the Czech Republic base their systems on the codes of Czechoslovakia, their ranges not overlapping.

Non-geographic codes

In Finland the special postal code 99999 is for Korvatunturi, the place where Santa Claus (Joulupukki in Finnish) is said to live.

In Canada the amount of mail sent to Santa Claus increased every Christmas, up to the point that Canada Post decided to start an official Santa Claus letter-response program in 1983. Approximately one million letters come in to Santa Claus each Christmas, including from outside of Canada, and all of them are answered in the same languages in which they are written.^[5] Canada Post introduced a special address for mail to Santa Claus, complete with its own postal code:

SANTA CLAUS

NORTH POLE  H0H 0H0

Formats

• A = letter
• N = number
• CC = ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code

Non-postal uses and economic aspects

While postal codes were introduced to expedite the delivery of mail, they are very useful tools for several other purposes, particularly in countries where codes are very fine-grained and identify just a few addresses. Among uses are:

• Finding the nearest branch of an organisation to a given address. A computer program uses the postal codes of the target address and the branches to list the closest branches in order of distance as the crow flies (or, if used in conjunction with streetmap software, road distance). This can be used by companies to inform potential customers where to go, by job centres to find jobs for job-seekers, to alert people of town planning applications in their area, and a great many other applications.^[8]
• Fine-grained postal codes can be used with satellite navigation systems to navigate to an address by street number and postcode.
• Geographical sales territories for representatives in the pharmaceutical industry are allocated based on a workload index that is based upon postcode.

Availability

The availability of postal code information has significant economic advantages. In some countries, the postal authorities charge for access to the code database. As of January 2010^[update], the United Kingdom Government is consulting on whether to waive licensing fees for some geographical data sets (to be determined) related to UK postcodes.

See also

• List of postal codes
• Category:Lists of postal codes
• Mailing address format by country

References

External links

• Universal Postal Union
  • Addressing
  • Postcodes
• Reference on World Postcodes