The following is a list of abbreviations used by the United States Postal Service. They are used to help the postal service process mail with optical character recognition and other automated equipment. ^*

States

Of the 50 states:

• 19 states are abbreviated by their first two letters:

AL, AR, CA*, CO*, DE*, FL, ID, IL, IN, MA, MI, NE, OH, OK, OR, UT, WA, WI, WY

• 15 state abbreviations are the first and last letter in a state's name:

CA*, CO*, CT, DE*, GA, HI, IA, KS, KY, LA, MD, ME, PA, VA, VT

• 10 two-word states are abbreviated by the first letter of each word:

NC, ND, NH, NJ, NM, NY, RI, SC, SD, WV

• The second letter for 9 states is from elsewhere in the name, often the second consonant:

AK, AZ, MN, MO, MS, MT, NV, TN, TX

* three states (CA*, CO*, DE*) are same for first two letters and first and last letters.

Postal codes alphabetized by postal abbreviation (not by state)

It is interesting to note that these codes do not overlap with the Canadian subnational postal abbreviations.

Other codes

Federal districts

Insular areas

Freely associated states

Armed Forces

Obsolete Codes

See also

• List of U.S. states by traditional abbreviation
• ISO 3166-2 International standard codes for subdivisions of countries – lists similar abbreviations for many more countries
• Canadian subnational postal abbreviations
• FIPS state code for the numerical equivalents that should be used by computer systems for storage

External links

• Official addressing instructions and abbreviations from the USPS (including abbreviations for street addresses)

Lists of abbreviations | United States-related lists | United States Postal Service

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