USPS Address Guidelines

The correct way to present a United States address is determined not by style guides from Western Michigan University or the Associated Press but by the requirements and preferences of the U.S. Postal Service. To ensure your mail is delivered and reaches its intended recipient the address should be typed or printed in black ink on white or light paper with a uniform left margin of 1/8 inch. Use one space between city and state, and two spaces between state and ZIP code. Do not place any information below the city or country line, including a logo, slogan or attention line as this interferes with postal sorting machines and slows delivery.

Quality addressing is critical to ensure timely and cost effective mail delivery. The first step is standardization (or data cleansing). This involves putting all your addresses into a common format. Then they are validated (or matched against the USPS database) to ensure each address is valid. Finally the data is merged with other key data sources to produce a verified list of mailable addresses.

A complete address is an address that has all of the address elements required to provide a match with the current Postal Service ZIP+4 and City State files at the finest level of sortation, including ZIP+4 and delivery point sortation. This provides the information needed to deliver a mailpiece to its destination and allows eligibility for discounts based on standardized addresses. A full, complete and standardized address also facilitates processing in the National Change of Address database.