Upper case addresses
Archive: Online bookselling
I thought it odd the other day that there was an outbreak of name and addresses in all caps. Then I realized all the orders avoiding lower case were from ABE's North American website.
Perhaps some engineer there shares my own aversion to people whose compulsive humility leaves them unable to use the shift key. Or some other functionary ordered the change in order to appear to be earning his or her keep.
Advertising research has long shown that people read mixed case more easily. I suspect the change won't have much affect. But if it has any it will be a few more packages misdelivered because the address it just a tiny bit harder to read.
I do all my cutting and pasting in ClipMate so it is just an extra keystroke to make the addresses more readable.
2 · Posted by: The Mailman on August 27, 2005 07:33 PM
False. Our scanners don't care at all. Not a particle.
Don't spread nonsense.
3 · Posted by: dm on September 18, 2005 12:43 PM
I don't believe I said upper case characters were required, only that they are optimal. Getting senders to write addresses in all caps tends to make them do so more carefully as well. I don't know how it is in your country, but Canada Post has a rather extensive set of standards for optimizing automated sortation:
http://www.canadapost.ca/personal/tools/pg/standards/cps1-05-e.asp
ps. I work for the Canadian census office. We do a LOT of OCR - I do know what I am talking about.
Feel free to share your feelings about Upper case addresses. Please stick to the theme of the entry. Disagreement is fine. Homophobia, racism, and kindred expressions of hatred will be deleted.
This site is one of my hobbies. I genuinely enjoy hearing from people and hate moderating or killing comments. Forthright disagreement is fine as long as it is civil.
My thanks,
Richard
1 · Posted by: dm on April 15, 2005 11:13 PM
All-uppercase addresses may be harder for humans to read but they're easier for postal OCR systems to read. You'll have fewer, not more, misdelivered packages if you use uppercase and they may even get there sooner…