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An address is a code and abstract concept expressing the fixed location of a home, business or other building on the earth's surface. In communications, a code is a rule for converting a piece of information (for example, a letter, word, or phrase) into another form or representation, not necessarily of the same type. ...
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Functions
Addresses have several functions: - Providing a means of physically locating a building, especially in a city where there are many buildings and streets,
- Identifying buildings as the end points of a postal system,
- A social function: someone's address can have a profound effect on their social standing,
- As parameters in statistics collection, especially in census-taking or the insurance industry.
[edit] A British pillar box. ...
1870 US Census for New York City A census is the process of obtaining information about every member of a population (not necessarily a human population). ...
The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...
History Until the advent of modern postal systems, most houses and buildings were not numbered. Streets may have been named for landmarks, such as a city gate or market, or for the professions of their inhabitants. In many cities in Asia, most minor streets were never named. This is still the case today in much of Japan. When postal systems were introduced, it became necessary to number buildings to aid in mail delivery. Rue Saint-Jacques, a street in Montreal, 1910 A street is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. ...
World map showing the location of Asia. ...
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Current addressing schemes [edit]
House numbering -
In most English-speaking countries the standard has become an alternating numbering scheme progressing in one direction up a street, with odd numbers running up one side (usually west or south) and even numbers up the other (usually north or east), although there is significant variation on this basic pattern. Cities in North America, particularly those planned on a grid plan, often incorporate block numbers, quadrants (explained below), and cardinal directions into their street numbers, so that in many such cities, addresses roughly follow the Cartesian coordinate system. Some other cities around the world have their own schemes. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
World map showing North America A satellite composite image of North America. ...
A simple grid plan road map (Windermere, Florida). ...
City Blocks are a part of the fictional universe recounted in the Judge Dredd series that appears in the UK comic book 2000 AD. // Overview Also known as starscrapers or stratoscrapers (compare skyscraper), they are the most common form of mass-housing in Mega-City One, averaging a population of...
A compass rose showing the cardinal directions Cardinal directions or cardinal points are the four principal directions or points of the compass in plane. ...
Fig. ...
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Quadrants In cities with Cartesian-coordinate-based addressing systems, the streets that form the north-south and east-west dividing lines constitute the x and y axes of a Cartesian coordinate plane and thus divide the city into quadrants. The quadrants are typically identified in the street names, although the manner of doing so varies from city to city. For example, in one city, all streets in the northeast quadrant may have "NE" prefixed or suffixed to their street names, while in another, the intersection of North Calvert Street and East 27th Street can only be in the northeast quadrant. Cartesian means relating to the French mathematician and philosopher Descartes, who, among other things, worked to merge algebra and Euclidean geometry. ...
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Street-naming conventions Street names may follow a variety of themes. In new developments, streets may all follow the same theme (e.g. bird species), or start with the same letter. Streets in Continental Europe and Latin America are usually named after famous people or auspicious dates. In many North American cities, such as Manhattan and Edmonton, Alberta, streets are simply numbered sequentially across the street grid. Washington, D.C., uses a system of numbered north-south streets combined with lettered and alphabetically named east-west streets; diagonal avenues are typically named after states. A street name or odonym is an identifying name given to a street or road. ...
Orders Many - see section below. ...
Continental Europe, also referred to as mainland Europe or simply the Continent, is the continent of Europe, explicitly excluding European islands and peninsulae. ...
Latin America consists of the countries of South America and some of North America (including Central America and some the islands of the Caribbean) whose inhabitants mostly speak Romance languages, although Native American languages are also spoken. ...
The Borough of Manhattan, highlighted in yellow, lies between the East River and the Hudson River. ...
Edmonton is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta, situated in the north central region of the province, an area with some of the most fertile farm land on the prairies. ...
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Postal codes Postal codes are a relatively recent development in addressing, designed to speed the sorting and processing of mail by assigning unique numeric or alphanumeric codes to each geographical locality. 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. ...
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Postal alternatives to physical addresses For privacy and other purposes, postal services have made it possible to receive mail without revealing one's physical address or even having a fixed physical address. Examples are post office boxes and poste restante (general delivery). A Post Office box is a uniquely-addressable lockable box located on the premises of a Post Office station. ...
Poste restante is a service provided by postal systems where the post office holds mail that has a notation written on it until the recipient calls for it. ...
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Geographical Address Conventions in the Media People may be said generally to get used to the form of geographical address used in their home location. However, this can cause confusion when people naturally extend their written generalisations from nationally used conventions to media where the audience is global. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Narrator. ...
This can be observed most frequently with internet usage, and in films where a scene opens with the location listed on screen.
For example, it can be guessed that someone writing the following would live in a member state of the United States of America: An international organization (also called intergovernmental organization) is an organization of international scope or character. ...
Birmingham, AL It is common in the US to include state codes in addresses, but these are often meaningless to persons outside of North America who are not accustomed to the US address format. In addition, the writer this example has assumed that others would not only understand from the use of a state code that their city of Birmingham is in the state of Alabama, but also that their city is in the USA. Another example of this phenomenon of US address forms being exported to a global audience is with Google Earth which is marketed globally -- try a search for Birmingham and then Birmingham, England. Next try St. Petersburg and St. Petersburg, Russia.
Of course, the above phenomenon is not limited to the United States. For example, even in media intended for an international audience, it is common to see a neighborhood in London referred to simply by its London postal district, e.g., W1. London (pronounced ) is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom. ...
The system of London postal districts predate the introduction of postcodes throughout the United Kingdom in the 1960s and have been adapted over time. ...
W1 is a London postal district located mostly in the City of Westminster with a small part in the Borough of Camden. ...
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See also [edit] In a postal system, a delivery point (sometimes DP) is a single mailbox or other place at which mail is delivered. ...
The Japanese addressing system is used to identify a specific location in Japan. ...
The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) is an initiative in the United Kingdom to provide a definitive and consistent address - see address (geography) - infrastructure for the whole of the UK. Up until recently the UK has not held a singular list of all addresses in the country, meaning that...
External links - Frank's compulsive guide to postal addresses
- GRC Database Information: links to pages relating to addresses and addressing
- service d'adresse mondial (SAM) worldwide address service
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