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Simon North posted the list of abbreviations for U.S. states,
and then added:
> I'm still looking for an authoritative source for other countries ....
Here are the abbreviations for Canada. The
abbreviations used in normal writing are from personal
knowledge - but, since I'm probably not quite the
"authoritative source" you were hoping for, I also
verified them in the Gage Canadian Dictionary.
The 2-letter postal abbreviations come from Canada Post
Corp's postal code directory.
In east-to-west order:
Provinces:
Newfoundland (Nfld.) NF
Nova Scotia (N.S.) NS
Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.) PE
New Brunswick (N.B.) NB
Quebec (Que. or P.Q.) PQ or QC*
Ontario (Ont.) ON
Manitoba (Man.) MB
Saskatchewan (Sask.) SK
Alberta (Alta.) AB
British Columbia (B.C.) BC
* I spoke to someone at Canada Post about this
recently. She said PQ is French and QC is English.
Sigh. Such is the illogic (okay, craziness) of a
partially bilingual country with serious identity
problems on both sides of the language wall.
NOTE: a lot of people are using "QU" but this is
not recognized at all by Canada Post.
** Nunuvut, the new territory carved out of N.W.T.,
has no official standing with Canada Post yet.
One last thing:
In the past I have asked a couple of postal reps in
both the U.S.A. and Canada about the 2-letter
abbreviations, and gotten the same acknowledgment
each time: when they stop to think about it, all
those 2-letter postal abbreviations are pretty much
_effectively_ obsolete. The street address and zip/
postal code are what the posties use for standard
processing. The postal/zip code reigns supreme!!
If you omit it, the package drops out of the automated
system, and at some point a human will try to interpret
the address and direct it properly. It doesn't really
matter any more whether you use a 2-letter abbreviation
or something else. The human can understand Nfld.
as easily as NF, or N.Dak. as easily as ND.
Cheers,
Ken d'Albenas
STC Alberta Chapter
(-::
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