Things that make you go "Hmmmm…"

[chappy]

Originally Posted by retina

http://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehood...out-addresses/

Street numbers don't contain fractions

Dan, Fred Kroon, David Underwood and Daniel Dickison submitted examples of fractional street numbers like 43rd ½ St, Pittsburgh, PA, and of fractional building numbers. These can be written in unicode (43rd ½ St), as a fraction with a slash (43 1/2) or as a decimal (43.5)

Hard to understand why they didn't go with the much more famous Platform 9 3/4 King's Cross Station as their counterexample.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by retina

http://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehood...out-addresses/

Great fun! Having dealt with databases of addresses I see things that I have dealt with. My employer's main address is on of those:
"Name of the Building"
City, Subnational division Post Code.

Here is a fun one:
125 125th St NW
Rice, MN 56367 ‎

There are streets in some areas with format:
housenumber directional StreetName StreetType 2digitDirectional

El Salvador has many addresses that are descriptive:
Last green house on the left

Dealing with e-bay sales and purchases internationally, I would always ask the individual to submit their address in their proper format, with line breaks.
Then print it out from the e-mail and tape that to the package, if it did not get there it was their loss.

Also fun is people with 2 addresses, one that is a deliverable address, the other that is used to go to their location. I know of some "snowbirds" that have a situation like that and their other seasonal address, making 3 addresses that need to be kept for them.

[firejuggler]

what about the case of
M. Abraham
147 rue du général leclerc
75007 Paris
and
M. Barington
147 ^bis rue du général leclerc
75007 Paris

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by retina

http://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehood...out-addresses/

I was startled to see my own suburb used as an example:

Originally Posted by http://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/

Sam pointed me to Menomonee Falls where houses are addressed using Milwaukee County's grid system instead of house numbers - giving addresses like N88 W16541 Foobar St.

But it doesn't get some details correct:

a) Officially there's no space between "N88" and "W16541".

b) "N88W16541" _is_ the house number! There's no "instead of".

c) Many other Milwaukee suburbs besides Menomonee Falls and Germantown use this system.

How do we know? The local Post Office sends each new resident a postcard specifying the official address! (I never had that happen before I moved here.)

One of my out-of-state relatives always wrote my N68W1xxxx address as "N68 WIxxxx", as though the "1" were the second initial of the state's postal abbreviation "WI".

BTW,

d) Mail addressed with "16541 W. Foobar St." instead of "N88W16541 Foobar St." is delivered correctly despite its unofficiality.

e) "N88" addresses occur on more than one street, because those streets are not oriented exactly east-west.

f) When my address was N68W1xxxx, my next-door neighbor's (same side of the street) address was N69W1xxyy, because our street angled toward the northwest rather than straight west. My house was the north- and western-most one with a N68 address on that street. My neighbor's house was the south- and eastern-most one with a N69 address on that street.

[Brian-E]

Yes, it's funny how such an article can be enlightening until it covers something close to home that you actually know about.

• Street names don't end in numbers
  Jan Jongboom reports streets can be numbered in the Netherlands - for example, Plein 1944 in Nijmegen.

Correct, except that "plein" is a square, not a street, and it is not "numbered" but in fact dated. The 1944 is a year, as is customary with similar "pleinen" in many places in The Netherlands.

[Xyzzy]

Each time we have sent out those big batches of buttons we ask the recipient for the address as they know it, because there are so many odd ways to write an address.

We remember thinking that some of those buttons would never make it to their destination, but we think they all did (eventually) arrive.

In the US, it is possible to verify addresses with the USPS so we sometimes reference that resource.

(We have been told that it is sometimes possible to mail a letter with just a zip+four for an address)

[xilman]

I've had two problems with my address. First is that the house number is 19a and so contains a letter. Second is that the more significant component of the post code changed from CB2 to CB22 some years ago. It's amazing how difficult it is to get that changed in some databases, those of the utilities being worst. The consequence is that cross-checks between suppliers and financial institutions (credi cards, banks, etc) sometimes fail and have to be sorted out manually.

[firejuggler]

In France, there is some street named ' rue du 8 mai 1945' or some other important event.

[BudgieJane]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

(We have been told that it is sometimes possible to mail a letter with just a zip+four for an address)

In the UK it is possible to send mail to me with just my house-number and my postcode, and it will get here.

[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by BudgieJane

In the UK it is possible to send mail to me with just my house-number and my postcode, and it will get here.

Yes, I remember from when I lived in the UK that the Royal Mail (is it still called that these days?) prided itself so much on being able to decipher poorly addressed mail that some people took those skills a bit too much for granted. There was a large collection of items which simply could not be delivered to the intended address, nor returned to the sender.

A priceless example, apparently, was a picture postcard containing the message "Having a lovely time, the kids are enjoying themselves, wish you were here, love Olive, Gwyn and the children." Written in the address section, underneath a first class stamp, was "Forgot your address".

[Nick]

Anyone remember this?

"Just mail it to Teejay, Zip Code 20505. It'll reach me."

"Now there's status. No last name, no street, no city, no state.
I wondered if he ever got junk mail."