Characters and symbols allowed in shipping and billing address?

Question

What characters and symbols are allowed in shipping, billing, physical address?

First/Last name: Letters, space
Address: Letters, numbers, space and # ' . , - /
City: Letters, space and -
Postal: Numbers, letters, space and -

If you're looking to standardize the address it's best to do it using an address verifying library of some sort after you let the user freely enter their address — camiblanch, Jun 22 '16 at 16:14
What about non English addresses? I think you need to allow Unicode in full. — Patrik Beck, Oct 31 '17 at 11:11
The IRS barfs on the # character in addresses. If you use that character in your tax return address field, you'll never be able to input your address on IRS website account access forms. — Han, Mar 10 '21 at 21:11

S. Mayol · Answer 1 · 2018-07-19T02:20:57.807

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Here is the official list with Special Characters NOT allowed in shipping and billing address by USPS.

Click on the hyperlink provided above and you will prompt to USPS page where you can see the Special Characters (not allowed), and some examples about the preferred and acceptable address format by the US Post Office.

edited Jul 19 '18 at 02:20

answered May 01 '18 at 16:18

S. Mayol

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To clarify this answer, the list of special characters that S. Mayol links to is the list *not* allowed (or often just not preferred) by USPS in shipping and billing addresses. The examples are very useful. – Neo Jul 18 '18 at 17:16
Thank you Neo, I added the corrections I forgot to say NOT allow. – S. Mayol Jul 19 '18 at 02:16
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USPS does not fix the standard especially for non US address. It's informational only if you don't use there service. I find there list unusable: removing commas and period but giving "acceptable" examples WITH commas. – Emmanuel Gleizer Jul 26 '18 at 05:31
In the US, the hyphen (dash) is normally only used in numbers (PO Box, etc.) but Canada commonly has hyphenated street names. https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_023.htm – MarkHu Feb 18 '20 at 17:56
Actually, this page has a different purpose. These are instructions for address mangling when necessary to shorten an address to fit in a database field. Go up one page in the breadcrumb to see the instructions. With that context, this is actually a list of special characters to be expected in a large list of addresses. Another page covers international addresses with non-roman letters: https://pe.usps.com/text/imm/immc1_008.htm – Gordon Hopper Mar 26 '21 at 23:51

Al Mills · Answer 2 · 2016-06-22T10:49:16.160

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Allow all of them! Especially when you take in personal names and organisations.

Marsh & Parsons
Apt # 5
651 1/2 main street
Westward Ho!
Renées Bakery
Toys 'R' Us

If you only allow certain characters, you are only going to frustrate your end users.

edited Jun 22 '16 at 10:49

answered Jun 22 '16 at 07:42

Al Mills

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 12 '17 at 15:37

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Below are the allowed characters and symbols in the billing and delivery address fields:

First and last name: Letters, space and & /. ( ) - , '

Address: Letters, numbers, space and # . , ; : ' °

City/town: Letters, space and - , . ; ' & / . ( )

Postal code: Numbers, letters and space

Phone number: Numbers, space and ( ) -

Email address: Letters, numbers and @ - _

answered Oct 12 '17 at 15:37

User

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What source did this come from? – Greg Feb 26 '21 at 15:08

Characters and symbols allowed in shipping and billing address?

3 Answers3