How To Address A Letter

in this age of electronic communication, writing letters is much less importantthan it used to be. but it is still nice, and sometimes necessary,to send things through the post. so in this video, i’m going to explainhow to write a german postal address. first of all, you don’t use block capitals.

How To Address A Letter, but you do have to write carefully: german handwriting is quite different from eitheramerican or british handwriting, so it is best to print clearly. be careful with digits.

in german handwriting, both the 1 and the 7have an additional stroke; and the number 9 should look like this. the simplest form of address has three lines. the first line is the name of the personor company you’re writing to. but do get it right: if you’re writing to somebodywho lives in an apartment block, you need to know thatthe mailboxes are not numbered. so if the name on the address doesn’t match withany of the names on any of the mailboxes, the letter can’t be delivered.

the second line isthe street name and house number. and they go in that order: street name first,and then house number. if you’re writing to a po box, it’sthe word “postfach” followed by the box number. the third line is the five-digit postal codeand the name of the city. if you’re writing to switzerland or austria,the postal code is only four digits. any additional information goes betweenthe first line and the street address. so, for example, if you’re writing toa specific person within a company, the company name goes on the first line,and the person’s name comes next. it’s not necessary, but it is allowed, to includethe name of the neighbourhood within the city.

people will tend to write thattogether with the city name, but officially it’s supposed to gojust above the street name. so a german postal address can havethree, four or five lines, not including the country nameif you’re writing from abroad. and that’s it. now, i want you all to takea nice picture-postcard and practice writing a german address on it. i would suggest one like... this.