Welcome to Faye and Brian Heany who have joined this week. If you haven't already contributed, we hope to hear from you soon. ****** ****** ****** This is a reworked response to a subscriber to a neighbouring list who wrote in part ... >could you tell me if the following postcode is correct >....Glasgow 633-ZBZ. In the examples below ( L = letter and n = number ) I have also had a number of recent messages (off list) on various UK postcode problems, due to confusion with either of the US "LL nnnnn", "LL nnnnn-nnnn" State plus Zip formats, or the Canadian "LnL nLn" postcode format, and the various UK ones. An Arran example which, as submitted looked like the first US format, was "KA 27800" Historically the first UK postcode were introduced for London. Examples include E1, SW6, etc. Next came single letter postcodes for the major cities - the obvious Scottish example is G for Glasgow. The nationwide introduction of postcodes to the UK saw "LLn nLL" chosen as the standard two group format, but for the historic reasons given above, and operational neccessity there are a number of variations. Note that the separator is always a space NOT a dash as used in the 9 digit US zip codes, and is always followed by nLL (this group does not AFAIK use the letters I or O) - the variations are all in the first group. So here are the possible UK formats that I know of : Ln nLL Lnn nLL (see solution to problem 1 below) LLn nLL (the most common form) LLnn nLL (see solution to problem 2 below) LLnL nLL Again AFAIK this last format is only used in London, as an extension of the first postcodes referred to above. Thus a fairly reasonable solution for the first problem code is G33 2BZ , and the second translates to : KA27 8DD Knowing the format will in many cases save you from having to search on line at www.royalmail.co.uk/paf/ or http://www.royalmail.com/paf/home.htm however, it's always an option if you still want to check your guess, and of course it's the place to go if you need to look up a full postcode. ****** ****** ****** Feel free to join in and present your own items. Peter Cook [email protected] List owner and Co-host with Barbara < [email protected] > of the ButeshireGenWeb mailing list. List owner of the SCT-RENFREW and SCT-ARGYLL mailing lists.