How to address an envelope

Where everything goes on an envelope

Every envelope uses the same three spots, because sorting machines look for each piece of information in one particular place. The recipient's address goes in the middle of the front as a compact block of lines. Your own address, the return address, goes in the top left corner, written smaller so a machine can't mistake it for the destination, and the stamp goes in the top right corner. On a #10 (4⅛ × 9½ in) business envelope it looks like this:

+------------------------------------------------+
| Jane Miller                          +-------+ |
| 48 Oak Ln                            | STAMP | |
| Austin TX 78704                      +-------+ |
|                                                |
|              MARIA LOPEZ                       |
|              1234 ELM ST APT 5B                |
|              SPRINGFIELD IL 62704-1234         |
|                                                |
+------------------------------------------------+

The stamp's position matters most, because the canceling machine turns every letter around until the stamp sits in that top right corner. A stamp anywhere else can be missed, and the letter is then pulled out and handled by hand, which costs time. If you need several stamps, put them side by side along the top edge, starting from the right.

The return address is the one item that can move. In the US and Canada it usually sits top left, but invitations and greeting cards often carry it on the back flap, which works fine. In the UK, Royal Mail asks for the sender's address on the back, so an empty top left corner is normal there. Wherever it goes, include it, because it's the only way an undeliverable letter can come back to you.

Writing the address in the US, UK, Canada and Australia

The address in the drawing follows the US Postal Service's preferences: capital letters, no punctuation, and standard abbreviations such as ST, AVE and APT. The apartment number goes on the street line, after the street. If it doesn't fit, move it to the line above, never below, because the machine treats the line just above the city as the delivery address. The last line holds the city, the two-letter state code and the ZIP code, and the four digits after the hyphen (the ZIP+4) pinpoint the building or block. They're optional, but they speed up sorting, and the USPS ZIP code lookup gives them for any address.

A British address runs from small to large and ends with the postcode on a line of its own. Royal Mail wants the post town in capitals and no county, and titles are written without a full stop, so a letter to a flat in Leeds, typically sent in a DL (DIN lang) envelope, looks like this:

Mr Tom Harris
Flat 3
27 Victoria Road
Headingley
LEEDS
LS6 1DR

Canadian addresses look much like American ones, with two differences. A unit number goes in front of the street number with a hyphen, so 12-345 MAIN ST means unit 12 at number 345, and the last line puts two spaces between the province code and the postal code, as in TORONTO ON M5V 2T6. Australian addresses end with the suburb, state and postcode on one line in capitals, such as BONDI NSW 2026, and a unit is written as Unit 4, 12 Smith Street or simply 4/12 Smith Street.

For mail to another country, write the address the way that country does, then add one final line: the destination country in capital letters, in English. Your own post office only reads that line, to send the letter to the right country, while everything above it is for the postal service at the other end. A card from Chicago to Leeds therefore ends with UNITED KINGDOM under the postcode, and a letter from London to Toronto ends with CANADA. Add your own country to the return address too, and leave the country off mail that stays at home.

Couples, families, companies and other special cases

When a letter is for more than one person, only the name line changes and the street and city lines stay as above. These are the usual forms in the US; in the UK, drop the full stops after Mr, Mrs and Dr.

"The Carter Family" is the easiest way to address a Christmas card to a household with children. "The Carters" works too, but "The Carter's" doesn't, because a plural surname takes no apostrophe.

For a company, put the attention line first, such as ATTN ACCOUNTS PAYABLE or ATTN MARIA LOPEZ, and the company name on the line below it. The company name gets the letter to the right business even if the person has left, and the attention line tells the mailroom who should open it. A PO box replaces the street line, so PO BOX 4471 goes where the street would be. If you give both, the letter goes to whichever is on the line just above the city, and a PO box may have a different ZIP code from the street.

US military mail has a short format of its own: rank and name, then unit and box number (UNIT 2050 BOX 4190), then APO for Army and Air Force or FPO for Navy and Marine Corps, with AE, AP or AA in place of a state, and the ZIP code. Leave out the city and the country where the person is stationed, because the letter travels inside the US mail system until the military takes it over.

Wedding invitations follow etiquette rather than postal shorthand. The mailed outer envelope carries full formal names (Mr. and Mrs. James Carter) and the address with words spelled out, Street rather than ST, which machines read without trouble as long as the writing is clear. An inner envelope, if you use one, has no address, only the names in a more familiar form (James and Ellen) plus any invited children, so the guest list is clear. Most invitations go in an A7 (5¼ × 7¼ in) envelope; the A7 envelope page shows what fits.

Mistakes that slow your letter down

A missing or wrong ZIP code or postcode does the most harm. Machines sort by that code first, so a letter without one, or with one that doesn't match the street, waits for someone to sort it by hand, which can add days. Look codes up rather than trusting memory, especially on a Christmas card list that hasn't been checked in years.

Position comes next. Scanners look for the address in the middle, so one written close to the bottom or running into the edges can be misread, and the bottom strip is where machines print their own sorting barcode. Leave a clear margin all around, start every line at the same left edge, and keep stickers out of the middle and the stamp corner. Ink matters too: pale ink, gold on a dark envelope or very ornate script look lovely on an invitation, but the scanner needs contrast, so keep at least the city line and ZIP code plain.

Printing the address instead of handwriting

Handwriting is fine for one letter, but for fifty Christmas cards or a stack of invitations, printing saves an evening and gives the scanners clean lines. OpenLabelMaker opens an envelope with this page's layout already in place: return address top left, recipient in the middle, stamp corner left free. You choose from 70 envelope sizes, including the #10 (4⅛ × 9½ in), the DL (DIN lang) and the A7 (5¼ × 7¼ in), type the address and pick a font (script fonts such as Great Vibes suit invitations). Then you print directly or export a PDF exactly the size of the envelope; most home printers feed these envelopes, but check yours.

For a whole list, you can import a spreadsheet and print one envelope per address with a free account, and printing addresses from Excel explains how to set up the list. If your printer won't take envelopes, address labels do the same job, and the guide to printing envelopes covers printing at home, one envelope or a whole list.