Anyone else pedantic about correct postal address format?

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For context, I'm from the UK. I don't know if it's the same in all countries but in the UK every single address in the country has a correct official way of being written, as can be seen found easily on the Royal Mail website:

Number + street name*
(Village/small town, if applicable)
POST TOWN
Postcode

*Replace with "House name" [new line] "Street name" if the house has just a name and no number - common in rural areas.

Common misunderstandings:

- County is never needed
- Intra-UK "country" (England, Wales, Scotland, NI) is never needed
- Post town should be in all capital letters
- Districts/areas of a town/city are never needed (e.g. "1 Brompton Road, Knightsbridge, London, SW..." should be "1 Brompton Road, LONDON, SW..."

I find about 90% of people (not an exaggeration) do not know the correct way to write their own address. The more rural the location is, the worse it gets, as people include names of hamlets (where the address actually comes under a nearby larger village), the county (not needed), and even odd bits like "opposite the school". Sometimes they just put the village then the county, which is bad as the actual post town is omitted (where all the area's post is delivered to before being delivered house-to-house).

Whenever someone gives me their new address if they've moved house etc., it's usually wrong and I write to them using the correct format, always checking on the Royal Mail website which contains every single address in the UK. Also I sell stuff from time to time on Amazon and eBay, and most of the time the delivery address is wrong so I correct it, and often get "amazed at speed of delivery" comments - this is the reason why!

Obviously I'm much more careful when sending abroad because every country has slightly different rules, but for the UK anyway, it bothers me how imprecise people can be about their own addresses - I would panic that mail would be delayed or undelivered.

Does anyone else share this particular pedantic trait?

I observe proper form and style whenever and wherever I can. In the United States, correct all-caps addressing, abbreviating and no punctuation allows for the fastest delivery with a minimum of human handling:

JOHN DOE
123 N MAIN ST APT 1
ANYTOWN ST(ate) 00000-0000 (ZIP+4 Code)
UNITED STATES (For international delivery only)

With such addressing, the envelope can get scanned and routed by computers. Those that fail for some reason, get shunted off for human eyes.

One extraordinary thing that I do is to place my return address (without name) to the reverse side of the envelope because the U.S. Postal Service has admitted that in scanning envelopes, it has developed a relational database of delievry and return addresses. In other words, they know who contacts whom with very little effort. If a letter needs to be returned, it can be done just fine with my address on the reverse.

Some months ago, I corresponded with a couple people in the United Kingdom (Scotland and Wales), and observed its Royal Mail addressing to the letter; it worked even faster than I expected!

I sell stuff on ebay occasionally as well and I've sent stuff to the UK with some pretty bizarre-sounding addresses. As in, when I see where I have to ship to, I'll go 'what the heck kind of address is that'.... some of them don't seem as though there is enough information to get a parcel there.

All I can do is write it exactly the way it appears on my ebay item page and hope the person's got their address entered correctly ....

One time the lady at the post office questioned me about a UK address... all I could say was 'that's how the buyer had it written' and

I did read a long time ago that apparently there's not supposed to be any punctuation in an address... so that instead of writing

Hamilton, Ontario or 33490 U.S.A.

it's supposed to be

Hamilton Ontario or 33490 United States

However I can't get out of the habit of putting "U.S.A." when I write to my Grandma - that's the way I've written it since I was little.

In some continental European countries, when sending mail to other European countries that have a fully numeric postcode (as opposed to alphanumeric like the UK and Canada), you don't even need to put the name of the country as long as you put the "country code" which is the same as what you see on the back of cars.

So (fictional example):

Jacques Doe
10 rue Charles de Gaulle
F-75000 PARIS

is all you need. A bit unnerving when sending to a foreign country without actually putting the name of the country, but that's what the official format is, and I've done it several times and it works!

Tom - is the UK postal system the only thing which you are pedantic about? (By the way, you didn't mention that the postcode should be underneath the name of the post town, and not on the same line.)

You also didn't mention that the stamp should always be the right way up, for fear of offending the queen. I agonise more over the correct positioning of the stamp than the correct format of the address.

I live in High Street, but I occasionally receive mail which is addressed to High Road, and sometimes I get mail which is addressed to a similar street name in a nearby village. I have also received mail which is addressed to High Terrace. In all cases, the postcode on the envelope was correct for the intended address, but was nevertheless delivered to me.

There is a long list of things which I am pedantic about (English grammar is not one of them, as the opening of this paragraph clearly shows),

I observe proper form and style wherever and whenever I can, too. It irritates me a tiny bit when others don't. It used to irritate me a lot more, but I've got plenty of other things to worry about so it's fallen to a much lower priority.

My adherence to correct form and style goes well beyond postal addressing. When I send business letters, for example, I stick to formal "business/technical writing" rules of the pre-computer age. This means that the name/address block on the letter itself is in a different format than the address on the outside of the envelope (the current "correct" format is a post-computer-age development, and I had to re-train myself a couple of decades ago).

For example, the heading on a letter should be in the format:

Mr. John Doe
1234 Main Street [or St.]
Anytown, ST 00000-0000
United States of America (if international mail)

And the greeting should always be "Dear Mr. Doe:" even if the recipient is a close personal friend, in which case, when signing the letter, you should (with the same pen with which you sign the letter) strike out the "Mr. Doe" part and hand-write "John."

For years I have tried to train secretaries to do things this way, alas, to no avail.