How to Label an Envelope

1. Choosing an Envelope

The most important thing is to find the right envelope for your letter if you are interested in mailing a letter. It is important because heavy contents might break through the envelope during transit if the chosen envelope is of very light construction.

Furthermore, the size of the envelope matters, the weight of the paper matters, and the intent of the letter matters like an envelope must not be fancy if it is for professional purposes.

2. Writing the return address

As per the mail letter format, you should write the return address as it is necessary if the mail is undelivered. In case, mail cannot reach its intended destination then postal service will send the mail back to your indicated location (return address.)

The return address must be written in the upper-left corner of the envelope and contains 3 lines of text. In the first line, you should write your full legal name with the title. In the second line, you should mention your street address, and in the third line, you should mention the city, state or province along with zip code.

3. How to Address a Letter

You have to write the recipient address in the middle of the envelope front. What you should include there is the name of the recipient, house number or apartment of the recipient, name of the street, province or state, city, along with postal code. Do use the 9 or 11 digit zip code if you know it correctly.

This is an important aspect of sending a letter. You must write everything in clear, upper-case letters by using dark ink so that it would be easy for any postal employee to read your writing accurately and quickly.

If you are sending the mail internationally then you need to include the name of the country in which your letter is about to get delivered. It is not necessary to include the country name if you are mailing the letter domestically.

How to write address on Envelope

• You can use the “attention” line abbreviation, “ATTN” in all capital letters if you are sending your envelope to an individual at a certain company. In such a case, your first line of mailing address starts with the name of the company.
• You can also use “c/o” designation (in care of) if you want to mail the letter to a certain individual but know that this letter will be handled by an intermediary.
• If the letter is indicated to military addresses then it needs more information, like the PSC number, ship name, or unit number. Here, the state should be replaced with AA, AP, or AE and the city name is replaced with APO (Air Army post office), DPO (Diplomatic post office) and FPO (fleet post office).

4. Taking care of Postage

If your letter is addressed to a U.S. address (including an FPO or APO address) and it has a standard weight that is less than an ounce, then you have to place one first-class stamp in the top-right corner of the letter. You can easily get stamps at any post office, or you can purchase one at USPS.com, or search these stamps at various retail stores.

In order to send heavy and over sized letters that are about to mailed overseas require extra postage so that they can reach the destination. You can get the rate chart of all current postage by visiting USPS.com.

If you have a scale to measure the weight of your letter then you can easily know how many postage you will need to pay. You must affix all these postage to the top right corner of your letter. If you don’t have a scale then you have to visit post office to get your letter weighed. A clerk will tell you how many postage you will require to mail your letter.

You must not place your stamp over any part of the mailing address. The letter envelope format says that the mailing address should be centered lower on the envelope.

You must not write anything over stamps.

You should double-check all the information you have written on an envelope.

Congratulations! You’re ready to mail.

If you like this post, may be you also find this post “How to Write a Recommendation Letter” useful.