U.S. Addressing Concepts

The USPS has established guidelines for what it calls quality addressing. Quality addressing ensures standardized addresses to help the USPS provide timely mail delivery. This goal becomes even more critical as mailers attempt to qualify for postal discounts based on ZIP Codes, ZIP + 4 Codes, and others. A standardized address is an address that has been matched against the U.S. Postal Database and formatted based on USPS addressing conventions.

A U.S. address can be a street address, a rural route address, a highway contract address, a P.O. box address, or a private mailbox address.

A street address contains these elements:

4235

N

MAIN

ST

NW

APT

100

House Number

Leading Directional

Street Name

Suffix

Trailing Directional

Apartment Label

Apartment Number

A rural route, highway contract, or P.O. box address has these elements:

RR

123

BOX

19

Rural Route or Highway Contract Type

Rural Route or Highway Contract Number

Rural Route, Highway Contract, or PO Box Number

A private mailbox address contains these elements:

PMB

345

Private Mailbox Type

Private Mailbox Number

Address elements and city/state/ZIP Code information combine to make address lines. These lines are defined as shown in the figure below:

For complete information on U.S. address standards, see the U.S. Postal Service® (USPS®) publication Postal Addressing Standards, USPS Publication 28, available on the USPS website.