> IMNSHO never use abbreviations like St, Rd, Ave, etc because of the risk of
misinterpretation in international contexts, eg
>

I agree that's good practice, but for the UK, a better rule is to use the
address as listed by Royal Mail. For example the official postal address here
is

Chiltern Court, 37 St. Peters Avenue Caversham, Reading

though the premises are registered for tax purposes as

Unit 3, 37, Chiltern Court, St Peters Avenue, Reading

while the business is registered at

Chiltern Chambers 37 St. Peters Avenue, Caversham, Reading, Berkshire, RG4
7DH, United Kingdom

(Chiltern Court is a collection of buildings one of which is known as Chiltern
Chambers).

Other variations commonly encountered include the use of a smaller district,
"Caversham Heights", the use of an apostrophe in "St. Peter's", the expansion
of "St" to "Saint", and the use of "Ave" to abbreviate "Avenue".

Any attempt to codify this is ultimately doomed to failure.

The US government procurement database (SAM) first refused to register us
because the address we supplied didn't match the legally-registered company
address, and when we corrected that, they weren't able to register us because
the address was too long.


Michael Kay