![]() ![]() ![]() What and where, then, you may wonder, is PKY SUITE 101? In most of the U.S. As the model address in the previous paragraph indicates, no commas are to be put between city and state in the Postal Service's brave new mailpiece world, and no periods are to be used after abbreviations. The translation of "to provide mutual cost opportunities" is, I presume, to save money, or a sum of moneypieces, which would then be passed on to the consumer as a slower march upward of postage rates. Why is it necessary to standardize address blocks, formerly known as addresses ? Because this will "reduce undeliverable-as-addressed mail, and provide mutual cost opportunities through improved efficiency," according to the National Address Information Center, whose address is listed in the booklet as "US POSTAL SERVICE (new line) 6060 PRIMACY PKY SUITE 101 (another new line) MEMPHIS TN 38188-0001." Capital, from the Latin caput, "head," gained a sense in Chaucer's time of "large letter placed at the head of a page or line." Even today, when used in the plural to describe a group of large-style letters, the term capital letters comes more naturally than uppercase letters to native speakers, few of whom, it seems, work at the Postal Service if more did, we would read an instruction like PLEASE USE CAPITAL LETTERS, with a reader-friendly explanation, "because it's hard to make out those little squiggles." Instead, we are advised: "Lowercase letters in various type styles are acceptable provided they meet the requirements of optical character reader (OCR) readability," which are said to be available in Chapter 4 of Publication 25, but my copy got lost in the mailpieces room. In outputting addresses to mailpieces, we are told: "Uppercase letters are preferred on all lines of the address block." Uppercase is a large letter, taken from printers' lingo when such type was stored in the upper of a pair of stacked cases small letters, you can readily assume, were stored in the typographer's lower case. That's what the United States Postal Service calls it in its publication "Postal Addressing Standards," which is "must" reading for those unfortunates born under the pound sign who cannot afford faxes and private delivery services. IF YOU WERE SITTING there addressing mail all day, and you wanted a new sense of bureaucratic self-importance, what would you call what you were doing? You would call it "outputting addresses to mailpieces." ![]()
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