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Subject:Re: state names From:Sally Marquigny <SALLYM -at- MSMAILHQ -dot- NETIMAGE -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 24 Jan 1995 10:15:00 PST
More Trivia: In China, that's the way they do it! Since the individual is
completely unimportant, the address goes from general to specific. I'm sure
hundreds of years of tradition have influenced their postal decision as well
as ours.
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From: TECHWR-L
To: Multiple recipients of list TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: state names
Date: Tuesday, January 24, 1995 9:32AM
>>If they really wanted to be efficient, they would change the order of the
address to be read from the top down:
zip code
number and street, or box number, or ...
person<<
The Post Office's "Read/Code/Sort Optical Character Reader" (RCSOCR)
equipment simply examines addresses from the bottom up, beginning with the
Zip Code. Where the machine begins the reading process has no impact on
"efficiency." The choice to read from the bottom up was partially
influenced
by the fact that extraneous marks on the envelope (extended postmark,
extended return address, etc.) are more likely to be at the top of the
envelope than the bottom.
sue stewart/suepstewrt -at- aol -dot- com, who worked on RCSOCR documentation in the
late 70's early 80's.
