Abbreviation of number - N, N°, Nr, Nbr, No?

I really need a help. To me send a address from Brazil to USA how I can put a abbreviation for number? :confused:
 
    • Welcome to the forum, monca.

    Can you tell us more clearly what number you're talking about in the address? In my experience the word "number", even in abbreviated form, doesn't usually appear in addresses.

    Ws:)
     
    Unless you are an old fashioned person like me. I tend to write 'No.' when there are single digit numbers:

    No. 7 Burlington Crescent

    I agree that it is not necessary and most of the time you will just see '7 Burlington Crescent'.
     
    That might complicates things for the automatic scanners used in postal sorting offices, nat. I've just asked a friend of mine who works for Royal Mail: he says that it could cause the letter to be rejected and set aside for manual sorting, which could delay its delivery.

    I imagine that could also happen in the US, where monca wants to send a letter, so I wouldn't recommend using "No." before the number.

    Ws:)
     
    The pound sign (#) is often used in addresses in the U.S. to indicate apartment numbers, but not street addresses. So we'd write 7 Burlington Crescent or 4255 High St. But if the person was in an apartment located at 4255 High Street, we might write 4255 High St., #5A. Or we might also avoid the entire problem by abbreviating the word "apartment" instead, e.g., 4255 High St., Apt. 5A.
     
    In BrE the pound sign is the currency symbol £, (not used in addresses, of course ;)). The symbol # is a hatch (unfortunately usually known by the corrupted form "hash", which is actually a dish of cooked meat and potatoes!:D) — and is also not used in addresses. If someone lived in Flat 5A, we'd write "Flat 5A" (or possibly, in some really posh residence in Park Lane, "Apt 5A").

    Not that that's relevant to your immediate needs, monca, but it might be good to know if you ever want to send a letter to the UK. I'd still be interested to know exactly what number you need to write.

    Ws:)
     
    We're talking about different kinds of "pounds," WS. :) The "hash" mark is sometimes called "the pound sign" in the US because we use it to indicate the weight sort of pounds, e.g., "5# of apples." This is actually fairly rare now, at least in my experience (though it is sometimes still used where brevity is important), but that's where the name "pound sign" comes from. We indicate the British unit of money the same way you do.

    But # is still commonly used to indicate various numbers, including apartment numbers. But never street addresses, at least not in my experience.
     
    In my case a need put my address in a English Form but my address is from Brazil and I don't know if I wrote number 655 or No. 655
     
    If it's your street address, you can do it like this:
    Monca LastName
    655 Whatever St.
    City, Province, postal code, etc.

    You don't need to use "No." or "Number" or anything.

    If it's an apartment number, there are lots of options, including #655, No. 655 or Apt. 655.
     
    .
    Monca, if it's your own Brazilian address you're writing on a form, I'd suggest you write it exactly as you would in Brazil. After all, if your contact writes back to you it'll be a Brazilian postman delivering it.
    JustKate said:
    We're talking about different kinds of "pounds," WS. :) [...]
    Click to expand...
    I know. I was just being mildly flippant.;) But I'm sure your excellent explanation will be useful to other readers, Kate.:)

    Ws:)
     
    monca2015 said:
    In my case a need put my address in a English Form but my address is from Brazil and I don't know if I wrote number 655 or No. 655
    Click to expand...
    Mail to addresses in Brazil is delivered by the Brazilian post office. Everything that happens after international mail arrives in Rio or Sao Paolo is done by Brazilians who read Portuguese. Give the address the way the Brazilian postal service wants to see it. People in other countries should just add "Brazil" (or its equivalent in their language) at the end.

    Cross-posted.
     
    And when my street is a number and not a name. I put:

    655 12 St.
    City, Province, postal code, etc ?

    ​And the name of my city and province need be in english or can be portuguese? 665 is my house number.
     
    Egmont I need send my address in a english Free Entry Form, the company is in Los Angeles and I am from Brazil. Teh people who go recive this form are english not portuguese so I really want know if I put in this Free Entry Form the name of my city and estate in english or not. Somebody can help?
     
    I'm not certain what you mean by a Free Entry Form, but I'm guessing it might be the US Customs "Declaration for Free Entry of Unaccompanied Articles".

    In any case, the only use the US authorities can make of your address is to contact you or to make enquiries about you. In either case your address would end up being read by some Portuguese-speaking person in Brazil. So your address should appear as you would use it in Brazil. If it contains the word "número" (or its abbreviation), then keep it in Portuguese. If it doesn't, then don't add it in English.

    The only exception would be to put the country name as it's spelt in the language of the receiving country. If my address were in Germany, I'd put "Germany" on that form, not "Deutschland". So normally you would put "Brazil" (but if you did put "Brasil" I'm sure it would be accepted).

    As for your city and state, I'm not aware of any Brazilian cities or states that have different names in English. (Are there any?) You certainly don't want to invent translations: Rio de Janeiro wouldn't be River of January! São Paulo, Espirito Santo and Mato Grosso wouldn't be Saint Paul, Holy Spirit and Thick Woods!:D

    Ws:)
     
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    The 'Free Entry Form' is a form that allows you to enter a contest without paying (for free).

    I would write the address as it should be written to be delivered by the post office in Brazil. Its purpose is to enable them to send you mail. They will copy whatever you have onto the package or letter if they have a reason to send something to you. If you use the English form, you may create problems for the people in Brazil who have to deliver the mail.
     
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    As you see, monca, context is important! It saves us having to guess at what you're really asking about.

    As it turns out, the advice everyone has given over the last 15 or so posts was appropriate anyway.

    Ws:)
     
    Hi everybody!

    And yet another question on the "number" abbreviation theme...

    I'm translating lines of code (don't ask) and the original sentence is:

    Number of residents

    The coded sentence would need to be something like:

    no_resdts

    As you can see, this can be easily misinterpreted as "No residents"! Including "of" would make the code too long, so unfortunately this is not an option. I was thinking about just leaving n_resdts and writing a note in the glossary. What do you reckon?

    Thanks in advance! :)
     
    I guess you're limited to 8 characters, Thel.

    Your n_resdts seems OK to me if the people reading the code have a background in maths &/or the sciences, where n is commonly used to represent a variable number.

    Otherwise, nmbr_res or nbr_resi might work. Whatever you choose, it would seem wise to define it in the glossary or in user notes.

    Ws:)
     
    The dts seems redundant to me. If it has to be written as a single string, then no-res would seem OK.
     
    First off, many thanks for your replies!
    I think I'll stick with n_resdts, then. I cannot use #, and "res" is already reserved. Thankfully it's not an 8-character limit (as WS helpfully pointed out, it might have been the case), so no problems there. "Pop" does not fit the context (it's "residents in a household").

    It is the actual code to be used in the application by programmers. I'll definitely add an entry in the glossary I'm compiling for their use, though.

    Again, thanks for your help! :)
     
    I wrote the following before seeing Thel's latest post, so it's a bit redundant now that we know # can't be used anyway. But I thought I'd post it anyway, as future reference for other readers.

    # might be OK in an American-influenced environment, roxcyn, but it's not widely known everywhere in the world. Even in US usage, I've generally seen it used to itemise (#1, #2, ...), rather than to mean 'number' as in quantity. There's also the risk that it might be read as some kind of operator in a program coding context.

    Ws:)
     
    Is anyone aware of any difference in usage when it comes to a heading on a column in a statistical table referring to the number of individuals (or whatever) in a particular category? Should it always be spelled out, to avoid confusion with ordinal numbers (as, for example, in a hit parade: No. 1, No. 2 etc.)? Or is there any other abbreviation that can be used to avoid any such confusion? Or is the problem an imaginary one (as context would usually make it clear what sense of the word "number" is being used)?
     
    I imagine that context would always tell you what was meant, Linnet.
    E.g. in this table
    school.gif

    it's all the stuff that goes with the table that tells you the numbers don't refer to chickens, eggs, nuclear missiles, or anything else:)
     
    In statistics, we also have different abbreviations symbols. We write things like N=50 or n=50 to mean there are 50 observations, subjects etc. and Σ=50. I can imagine a table where you have n or Σ heading a column.
     
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