What's the deal with using the two-letter postal code abbreviations for states, instead of the longer, more formal abbreviations? That is, why write IN for Indiana instead of good old Ind.? A caller is annoyed by U.S. Postal Service abbreviations creeping into modern prose, and thinks they should be reserved for postal addresses.
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I, for one, hate the two-letter postal abbreviations and I never use them.
Anyway, they seem entirely inappropriate for an international medium like the Web. I have seen numerous discussions get derailed when Americans confuse non-American participants with postal abbreviations.
Furthermore, the postal abbreviations for states are entirely superfluous in terms of delivering the mail. Postal codes are already mandatory, and they are much more granular than state abbreviations.
A third thing that bothers me is the way that people misuse commas when using state abbreviations (although this also does happen when not abbreviating). As in --
I went to Ithaca, NY for the summer.
You can't use a single comma like that! This kind of usage tells you that you can break the sentence at the comma and that two principal elements of the sentence are "I went to Ithaca" and "New York for the summer." That makes no sense.
It should be --
I went to Ithaca, NY, for the summer.
That tells you that the "New York" part is an appositive or parenthetical and can be safely removed without harming the meaning of the sentence.
I don't call them abbreviations, altho the USPS now calls them that. In the US, they would be followed by a period if they were, and the second letter wouldn't be capitalized. I think they were originally called "identifiers."
You have a point about the comma after "NY," but I probably would leave it out and figure that it would be more understandable that way.
What is madding to me is that when you fill out applications or notices on line you always have to use the drop down menu instead of even typing the abbreviation. I prefer the old abbreviations any way.
Not necessarily. If you type the first letter of the abbreviation (or any entry in a drop-down menu), it'll jump to the first entry that begins with that letter. Type the same letter again and it'll jump to the second, and so on.
Living in Arizona, I press "A" three or more times depending upon how many non-states (e.g., American Samoa) have been included in the list.