Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 December 9

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December 9

Addressing a Formal French Envelope

Reading through save-the-date proofs from the calligrapher for our wedding. The calligrapher rightfully indicated that one-word house numbers should be spelled out when addressing formal envelopes-- Ten Main Street, Fifteen West 34th Street, etc. However, she didn't know what to do for the envelope we're sending to our friend in Paris (let's pretend it's "16 Rue Dauphine"), so she just left the numeral "16" instead of spelling it out in any language.

With that background, my question is, to follow with the formal format, should we spell it out as "Soixante Rue Dauphine?" Is that something that is done in formal French writing etiquette? (I realize that it'll get there regardless, but we have the opportunity to "do it right" so I'm really just curious what would be considered correct!) Please indicate your qualifications for answering when responding, or point me to a source if you could! Jared (t)  16:03, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

If anything, it's Seize Rue Dauphine. However, I think the calligrapher is wrong, house numbers should never be spelled out. Most mail is sorted automatically these days, and the address recognition systems expect numerals for house numbers and post codes. This is also confirmed by several web sites discussing the issue, e.g. [1], [2]. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:25, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm a native French speaker but please wait for some other French speaker advice here, as I'm not very knowledgeable on these things. All I can tell you is that it's very unlikely (and a bit risky as Wrongfilter pointed above) to see numbers in letters on a French enveloppe. Also, you must not use capital R for rue, no capital A for avenue, no capital B for boulevard, etc, and you must use a comma right after the number, like this: 16, rue Dauphine. Inside the enveloppe is another matter entirely. You can write the invitation in whichever style you like, numbers in letters, etc, no problem. See http://www.francaisenaffaires.com/capsules-linguistiques/lentreprise/adresses-de-correspondances.html Akseli9 (talk) 16:37, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Event though it's against the French typographic rules, French Mail recommends not to put a comma after the number and to write the name of the town in capital letters without diacritic marks. 16 rue Dauphine [On an another line] 75006 PARIS. See (in French) [3]. Inside the enveloppe the typographic rules should apply, if the text is in French… – AldoSyrt (talk) 09:50, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

The truth is that the United States Postal Service doesn't really like you to write out numbers as words, either. (They also like all caps, and block letters, as far as it goes.) If you go to the USPS website and enter an address like that in the ZIP-code lookup app, it will return a numeral, make no mistake. I tried to find a formal rule on the website and failed. I did find many blog posts from people who got invitations back, or heard from their local post offices that such addressing led to a need for hand sorting and subsequent delivery delays.

What I learned as a kid was not to write out "one-word" house numbers, but rather to write out house numbers up to and including "ten". I have seen other versions of that rule go as high as "twenty", but not higher than that. Additionally, I have learned from experience—I live on a numbered street of value below ten–that using the word version of my street name rather than the numeral version leads to delays. Formal etiquette is very nice for a wedding, but the sorting computers do not care. And the most important thing is to get the invitation delivered, right? 'Nuff said. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:51, 9 December 2015 (UTC)