United States postal abbreviations

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
A state or the circle indicating any state on the map below may be clicked upon to go to that particular state, or you may use the text links below the map. (The federal District of Columbia represented on this map as DC is not a state.)

Postal codes alphabetized by postal abbreviation (not by state)

These codes do not overlap with the thirteen Canadian subnational postal abbreviations.

Example of address
JOHN DOE 358 OAK LANE GIBBSBORO NJ 08026

Trivia or mnemonics
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 (California, Colorado, Delaware) have the same second letter and last letter.