States with two words in their names also share USPS and traditional abbreviations, with the exception of New Mexico (NM and N.Mex.), North Dakota (ND and N.Dak.), South Dakota (SD and S.Dak.), and West Virginia (WV and W.Va.).

States that use the same letters in both USPS and traditional abbreviations are: Georgia (GA and Ga.), Kentucky (KY and Ky.), Louisiana (LA and La.), Maryland (MD and Md.), Missouri (MO and Mo.), Pennsylvania (PA and Pa.), Vermont (VT and Vt.), and Virginia (VA and Va.).Of these states, only two follow the first-and-second-letter rule: Massachusetts (MA) and Michigan (MI). Much of the confusion around state abbreviations comes from the eight states that begin with 'M' (Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, and Montana).Giving either state the abbreviation of TE would be confusing therefore, Tennessee is TN and Texas is TX. Some states, such as Tennessee and Texas, begin with the same letters.

Alaska and Hawaii are also never abbreviated in traditional abbreviations, although they are abbreviated in USPS abbreviations (AK and HI).

These states are Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, Texas, and Utah.

States with five or fewer letters are never abbreviated in traditional abbreviations. A typical use of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet would be to spell out each letter in a word over the phone by saying, for example: 'S as in Sierra' (or 'S for Sierra'), 'E as in Echo, Y as in Yankee, F as in Foxtrot, R as in Romeo, I as in India, E as in Echo, D as in Delta' to communicate the spelling of the name 'Seyfried' correctly.

Some of these states of confusion include: However, there are a few states that break the rules or are especially confusing. One exception is Nebraska, which changed its abbreviation from NB to NE in 1967 to avoid confusion with the Canadian province New Brunswick. State Nameĭid you know? For the most part, these state abbreviations have stayed the same since 1963. state postal abbreviations as well as their traditional abbreviations. Note that with the traditional state abbreviations, the first letter is capitalized, subsequent letters are lowercase (unless they're abbreviating a new word) and each abbreviation (where the name is not written out in full) ends in a period.īrowse the list of all 50 U.S. There is also a list of traditional abbreviations used in other contexts. State postal abbreviations are all two letters, and these two letters are always capitalized without any periods. These official state abbreviations have all been standardized by the United States Postal Service (USPS).

Spelling a word in alphabetical order