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Postal Code

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A '''postal code''' is a series of letters and/or numerical digit digits appended to a address (geography) postal address for the purpose of sorting mail. Germany was the world's first country with a postal code system in the early 1960s. The United States followed a couple of years later. The majority of the world's national mail postal services have postal code systems. A few do not: the Republic of Ireland (with the exception of Dublin, though this is more correctly a sorting code and not a postal code), Hong Kong and Panama, for example, do not have postal codes^{#Footnote 1}, while New Zealand's New Zealand postal addresses post code system is only used for the presorting of mail in bulk, not for addressing individual items. Postal services often have their own distinctive formats and placement rules for postal codes. (Service areas, as a rule, are defined by national borders.) In most English-speaking countries, the postal code goes after the name of the city or town, whereas in most continental European countries it goes before it and is sometimes prefixed with a country code (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2). This is to overcome confusion between postal codes in diferent countries that may be identical, as in Europe, most postal codes are numerical consisting of four or five digits. Following German reunification in 1990, postal codes in the former West Germany were prefixed with the letter 'W', and postal codes in the former East Germany East, with 'O' (for 'Ost' or 'East' in German language German). Although postal codes are usually assigned to geographical areas, sometimes this is not the case: special codes may be assigned to institutions with large volumes of post, such as government agencies and large commercial companies. One example is the French Cedex (France) Cedex system.

Alphanumeric postal codes
Most postal codes are numeric. The few using alphanumeric postal code systems (with letters and digits) are: *Argentina *Bermuda *Brunei *Canada *Jamaica *Malta *The Netherlands *United Kingdom *Venezuela*

Postal zone numbers
Before postal codes as described here were used, large cities were often divided into ''postal zones'' (or ''postal districts''), usually numbered from 1 up within each city. The newer postal code systems often incorporate the old zone numbers, as with London postal district numbers, for example. Dublin, Ireland still uses postal district numbers, as postal codes are not used in the country at all. (An Post relies on Optical character recognition OCR analysis of the entire address instead.) In New Zealand, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch were also subdivided into postal zones, but these have fallen into disuse.

See also
*Universal Postal Union (UPU) *List of postal codes — for all countries (shows each country system's respective syntax only) *Lists of postal codes — index to full postal code lists for each country *UK postcodes — article about British postcodes *ZIP code — article about U.S. postcodes *Canadian postal code *:Category:Lists of postal codes

External links

- UPU files for every country in Portable_Document_Format PDF
- Formats of all countries' postal codes
- German postal codes in German language
- French Belgium and Switzerland postal codes in French language
- French postal codes in French language
- International zip codes
- GfK MACON: Worldwide post code maps for GIS
- GRC Database Information: postal code links

Footnote
¹ At the time of writing the Republic of Ireland is currently in the process of creating a postal code system for the state. Category:Geocodes Category:Lists of postal codes *Postal code als:Postleitzahl ast:CÃ³digu postal bg:ÐŸÐ¾Ñ‰ÐµÐ½Ñ?ÐºÐ¸ ÐºÐ¾Ð´ be:ÐŸÐ°ÑˆÑ‚Ð¾Ð²Ñ‹ Ñ–Ð½Ð´Ñ?ÐºÑ? ca:Codi postal cs:PoÅ¡tovnÃ smÄ›rovacÃ Ä?Ãslo da:Postnummer de:Postleitzahl es:CÃ³digo postal eo:PoÅ?tkodo fr:Code postal fy:Postkoade id:Kode pos is:PÃ³stnÃºmer it:CAP hu:IrÃ¡nyÃtÃ³szÃ¡m nl:Postcode ja:éƒµä¾¿ç•ªå?· nn:Postnummer pl:Kod pocztowy pt:CÃ³digo postal ro:Cod poÅŸtal ru:ÐŸÐ¾Ñ‡Ñ‚Ð¾Ð²Ñ‹Ð¹ Ð¸Ð½Ð´ÐµÐºÑ? scn:CAP sk:PoÅ¡tovÃ© smerovacie Ä?Ãslo sv:Postnummer tr:Posta kodu uk:ÐŸÐ¾ÑˆÑ‚Ð¾Ð²Ð¸Ð¹ Ñ–Ð½Ð´ÐµÐºÑ? wa:Limero del posse zh:é‚®æ”¿ç¼–ç ? see Postal code

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