Checked line by line against USPS Publication 28
Never guess how to address an envelope again.
Widows, doctors, army bases, apartment buildings, post office boxes. Whatever is on the front of your envelope, there is a page here that gets it right.
The whole site on one envelope
Four zones decide whether your letter arrives
Tap a zone to read the rule
Return address
Top left, 0.25 in margin
Top left corner, at least a quarter inch in from the top and left edges. Leave it off and mail that cannot be delivered goes to the Mail Recovery Center in Atlanta instead of coming back to you.
Postage
Top right, 1.5 in square
Top right corner. A stamp placed anywhere else can be missed by the canceling machine, which means the letter gets pulled out and handled by hand.
Delivery address
Centered, inside the OCR read area
This is the block the scanner reads. Keep it inside the middle band of the envelope, all in one font, with no punctuation and nothing else written near it.
Barcode clearance
Bottom 0.625 in, right 4.75 in
The bottom 5/8 inch across the right side of the envelope has to stay empty. The sorting machine prints a barcode here. A decorative border or a low line of writing can corrupt it.
Most searched
The situations people actually get stuck on
- 01The 10 mistakes that get mail returnedThe ten addressing mistakes that cause returned mail, what the USPS scanner does with each one, and the exact fix for all of them.Read it→
- 02How to address an envelope to an apartmentWhere the apartment number goes on an envelope, why the third line trips up the USPS scanner, and the format that gets it delivered.Read it→
- 03How to address an envelope to a married coupleSame last name, different last names, and military rank precedence when one or both spouses serve, with real officer and enlisted examples.Read it→
- 04How to address an envelope to a PO BoxThe PO Box format, why you should never put a street address and a box number on the same envelope, and how PMB is different.Read it→
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Find your scenario
- Apartments & units
- PO Boxes
- Doctors & professionals
- Military (APO/FPO)
- Widows & sensitive mail
- Common mistakes
- Weddings & invitations
- International mail
- Businesses & offices
- Not sure? Start here
Every format on this page follows current USPS guidelines
Why trust this
We read the rulebook so you don't have to
The Postal Service writes down the exact rules its machines use to sort mail. Most addressing advice online was written without anyone opening that document. We opened it, and every page here says when a rule comes from the manual and when it is just good manners.