[OT] Is it "post code" or "postcode" ?

[Douglas de Lacey]

Isn't that identical to searching for "post-code" (*without* the quotes)?

Douglas de Lacey

[manatbandq]

Not in Google where hyphens are stripped. "post-code" without the quotes searches for postcode. "post code" with quotes searches for the phrase "post code". In both cases Google asks if you really meant to search for postcode.

MBQ

[{{{{{Welcome}}}}}]

Thus spaketh [e-mail]:

The address for people who live in Coleshill, North Warwickshire is.

[Address Line 1] Coleshill BIRMINGHAM B46 . . .

Even the local council uses the postal address.

[Douglas de Lacey]

No, it's a bit more subtle than that. It searches for post[pretty well any punctuation]code, so includes "post. Code" and "post --- Code" (first hit!) as well as postcode.

Yes. Douglas de Lacey

[manatbandq]

The point being that searching for "post code" searches *only* for that phrase and not all the other crap you get when searching for post-code.

So, again, searching for "post code" is *not* the same as searching for post-code.

MBQ

[mcbrien410]

What I really like about the Postcode is ......................................... absolutely nothing. I mean to say, there I am driving through Brighton and you can see the signs, "Oh look! We're in BN15FL now and there's 3FL just up the road. It stands out like Bogs Boll--x doesn't it. There's nothing wrong with conventional well maintained sign posts. They never had LapTops and a pile of CD's way back when.....

Chris.

[PeTe33]

Pah... You think you have problems....

hasn't existed for 10 years yet you are still forced to put "Avon" in those cumpolsory county fields on web-sites, and we still have Avon & Somerst Police and Fire services.

Actually, on reflection being classed as "Birmingham" would be far worse.

:¬)

[Martyn H]

that would be Birmingham as the 'Post town'

post townsand post codes have little respect of traditional borders - viz the amount of both historic and post 1974 lincolnshire with Nottingham, Peterborough and Doncaster Postcodes despite the existance of the Lincoln LN postcode

[mUs1Ka]

The Shrewsbury postcode reaches as far as Aberystwyth.

[scorpio18]

Fussy bugger :p

[Robert Bannister]

Most of our envelopes have boxes for the postcode. Since, in Australia, this is only 4 digits, it's pretty much a give-away that I shouldn't write a US or UK postcode there. Still, it is confusing. I tend to write them down the bottom next to the country, which I always write bottom left, separate from the rest of the address.

[Robert Bannister]

Now we're onto a different, but even more awful subject: signposting. You would love driving on our city freeway, where most signs are to "places" like "Hodges Avenue", "James Street", etc. - not a suburb in sight, and some of these roads are quite long, so you could be anywhere.

[R H Draney]

I wonder if I've still got that envelope from Krasnoyarsk near the end of the USSR...I don't know if they later felt compelled to change the hammer-and-sickle postmark design, but I always admired the sensible addressing scheme: country on the first line, then city and region (oblast or other state-equivalent), then street and house-number, and finally the addressee's name...go from the general to the specific, like they taught us in school....

(And then the US Postal Service gets all ooky because everything but the first and last line are in the Cyrillic alphabet)....r

[Robert Bannister]

Ah, I remember when it used to be like that in Germany, but they had to go all international.

[Douglas de Lacey]

The quotes are significant, otherwise you

No, but I was replying to >>>>>If it really matters to you, use the advanced search option to search >>>>>for postcode or "post code".

Douglas de Lacey

[Tim Clark]

Telephone numbers tend to follow that sensible structure too, often something rather like: country, area, exchange, subscriber.

Also, when data networks weren't all TCP/IP and Internet, in the UK a network naming structure for things like email was emerging which followed the same sensible order (e.g. uk.ac.camford.eng). Unfortunately it was eventually overwhelmed by the back-to-front style which became adopted for domain naming on the Internet.

Web URLs follow the same logical general-to-specific structure too, e.g.

only my the back-to-front domain name part in it.

[thoss]

At least all of those have a logical structure of going from large step by step to small, or small step by step to large. And that's also the way it is with dates on this side of the pond. But what are we to make of the American date format month/day/year?

(At first I did a typo there and put month/day/tear. Very apt, I thought.)

[nicandal]

I remember studying at "uk.ac.shef" and chatting over JANET to my mates at uk.ac.newc. Ah they were the days. I never understood the American trend (in dates and URLs alike) to go from specific to general and back again. Or put another way: in dates to go from mid-importance to least-importance to most-importance.

And don't get me started on their time format: hh:mm AM/PM. So you see crap like 06:45 PM - AARGH! I was taught to use the 24-hour clock and if you specify a leading zero that means AM implicitly.

al