7 March 2008

Proper Placement of Personal & Confidential on an Envelope

I have always seen the placement of Personal & Confidential on envelopes as follows:

PERSONAL & CONFIDENTIAL

Ms. Jocelyn Smith
ABC Company
Any City Any Province/State Postal Code/Zip Code

I would recommend bolding and capitalizing Personal & Confidential to make it stand out.

At one place I worked we were told by the post office to put the City, Province/State, Postal/Zip Code information on one line as follows for better mail processing:

OTTAWA ON K1R 1A2
Canada

I was also taught that the proper spacing should be:

City (one space) Province/State Abbreviation (two spaces) Postal/Zip Code.

Punctuation is optional as either way is acceptable:

OTTAWA, ON K1R 1A2 or OTTAWA ON K1R 1A2

3 comments:

Maureen said...

Is placing the mention of Personal and Confidential directly above the address on an envelope still an acceptable practise in 2015?

Patricia Robb said...

It's the only way I've seen it done. Of course with email, you can mark your email with Private, Personal or Confidential as well.

M Graham said...

Thank you!! Exactly the information I was looking for.