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An address is a Code and abstract concept expressing the fixed location of a home, business or other building on the earth's surface. FUNCTIONS Addresses have several functions: # Providing a means of physically locating a building, especially in a city where there are many buildings and streets, # Identifying buildings as the end points of a Postal System , # A social function: someone's address can have a profound effect on their social standing, # As parameters in statistics collection, especially in Census -taking or the Insurance industry. HISTORY Until the advent of modern postal systems, most houses and buildings were not numbered. Street s may have been named for landmarks, such as a city gate or market, or for the professions of their inhabitants. In many cities in Asia , most minor streets were never named. This is still the case today in much of Japan . When postal systems were introduced, it became necessary to number buildings to aid in mail delivery. CURRENT ADDRESSING SCHEMES In most English-speaking countries the standard has become an alternating numbering scheme progressing in one direction up a street, with odd numbers running up one side (usually west or south) and even numbers up the other (usually north or east), although there is significant variation on this basic pattern. Cities in North America , particularly those planned on a Grid Plan , often incorporate Block numbers (explained below), quadrants (explained below), and Cardinal Directions into their street numbers, so that in many such cities, addresses roughly follow the Cartesian Coordinate System . Japanese cities usually number buildings by block and neighbourhood ( Chome ) rather than street; as a result most Japanese streets are unnamed. When building numbers were assigned in Florence , Italy , residential addresses were assigned blue or black numbers, while commercial addresses were assigned red numbers (written with a "/r" after the number). The two numbering sequences are independent; thus, 40/r is not necessarily anywhere near 40. Block numbers Block numbers are a system of assigning numbers based on distance rather than strictly sequentially. Typically, each block is assigned 100 numbers, such that the building numbers on that block vary only in the two least significant digits. For example, in Washington, D.C. , the block of 7th Street, N.W., between D and E streets, N.W., is designated as the 400 block, meaning that building numbers on that block are in the range from 400 to 499 inclusive. It is common to indicate block numbers on street signs; for instance, the article on Pennsylvania Avenue shows a street sign indicating what is probably the most famous block number in the world. Some localities, such as the Borough of Queens in New York City , use a block numbering system in which a hyphen separates the hundreds digit from the tens digit. For example, a building number that might elsewhere be written 16709 is instead written 167-09. Some localities in the Midwest have a more elaborate system of block numbering. Such localities use compound block numbers to indicate the number of blocks from both the north-south and the east-west dividing lines. For example, an address might be of the form "N112 W16709 Such-and-such Street" rather than "16709 W. Such-and-such Street." Of course, such an address is in the northwest quadrant (see below) of the addressing system. Quadrants In cities with Cartesian-coordinate-based addressing systems, the streets that form the north-south and east-west dividing lines constitute the ''x'' and ''y'' axes of a Cartesian Coordinate Plane and thus divide the city into quadrants. The quadrants are typically identified in the street names, although the manner of doing so varies from city to city. For example, in one city, all streets in the northeast quadrant may have "NE" prefixed or suffixed to their street names, while in another, the intersection of ''North'' Calvert Street and ''East'' 27th Street can only be in the northeast quadrant. Street-naming conventions Street Name s may follow a variety of themes. In new developments, streets may all follow the same theme (e.g. Bird species), or start with the same letter. Streets in Europe and Latin America are often named for auspicious dates. In many North American cities, such as Manhattan and Edmonton, Alberta , streets are simply numbered sequentially across the street grid. Washington, D.C., uses a system of numbered north-south streets combined with lettered and alphabetically named east-west streets; diagonal avenues are typically named after states. Postal codes Postal Code s are a relatively recent development in addressing, designed to speed the sorting and processing of mail by assigning unique numeric or alphanumeric codes to each geographical locality. Postal alternatives to physical addresses For privacy and other purposes, postal services have made it possible to receive mail without revealing one's physical address or even having a fixed physical address. Examples are Post Office Box es and Poste Restante (general delivery). GEOGRAPHICAL ADDRESS CONVENTIONS IN THE MEDIA People may be said generally to get used to the form of geographical address used in their home location. However, this can cause confusion when people naturally extend their written generalisations from nationally used conventions to media where the audience is global. This can be observed most frequently with internet usage, and in films where a scene opens with the location listed on screen. A good example of this is Wikipedia, where a significant number of the contributors are Americans. For example it can be guessed that the contributors writing these phrases are Americans: Birmingham, England Birmingham, AL In the former example, the contributor can be guessed not to be from Birmingham in the UK because, although Birmingham is indeed a city in England, someone from Birmingham would be unlikely to use this format to describe their address. In the latter example it is common in the US to include state codes in addresses, which may be somewhat meaningless to persons outside of North America who are not accustomed to the US address format. In addition, the contributor in this latter example has assumed that others would not only understand from the use of a state code that their city of Birmingham is in the state of Alabama, but also that their city is in the USA. Another example of this phenomenon of US address forms being exported to a global audience is with Google Earth which is marketed globally -- try a search for Birmingham and then Birmingham, England. Next try St. Petersburg and St. Petersburg, Russia. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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