[torsoboy]

I guess I should have paid more attention in World Geography...

I am working on an online store and am supposed to be entering in some information for England. The info that I am supposed to be entering is the States/Provinces of England, but I can't seem to find a list of them. All I can find is the following list:

England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland

Is that all there is?

[lurkalot]

Originally Posted by torsoboy

I guess I should have paid more attention in World Geography...

I am working on an online store and am supposed to be entering in some information for England. The info that I am supposed to be entering is the States/Provinces of England, but I can't seem to find a list of them. All I can find is the following list:

England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland

Is that all there is?

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/...s/uk.html#Govt

http://www.abcounties.co.uk/

[JoshuaZ]

`Anything to declare?`
`Don`t go to England.`

[torsoboy]

Originally Posted by lurkalot

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/...s/uk.html#Govt

http://www.abcounties.co.uk/

"England - 47 boroughs, 36 counties, 29 London boroughs, 12 cities and boroughs, 10 districts, 12 cities, 3 royal boroughs"

Suck dang! Which of those do you suppose is equivalent to a state or province?

[Athens]

They might not have anything similar to States/Provinces. Englind is pretty small.

[macmad]

A 'County' would probably be the UK equiv. to a state. Even though in the US, states contain counties

[lurkalot]

Different system. Non are really equivalent to states in the sense of U.S. states. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is probably the closest equivalent in the U.K..

Sorry, just another link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Government

and a link plus quote:
"The United Kingdom consists of four countries: England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. This page shows the counties for the first three countries; Northern Ireland is included on the Ireland page.
These countries are divided into counties, but counties are grouped together unofficially to form regions. For example, Wessex is not an official county, but is the name of the region consisting of Wiltshire, Somerset and Dorset. And Wessex, along with Devon and Cornwall, is referred to as the West Country.
This can be confusing when looking at vacation rental listings. Some sites list by county, but others list by these unofficial regions.
Use this page to learn the counties. You can find a good map showing the counties on Pictures of England.
The official tourist web site for England, Visit Britain, shows the unofficial regions mostly as I have listed them below. The Eyewitness Guide breaks the regions up somewhat differently and I used some of their divisions below. Visit Britain: Maps of England" http://www.slowtrav.com/uk/maps/uk_counties.htm

Not gonna help you much but just to show that you're not the only one confused by the current "standardized" system of U.K. sub-division or perhaps better described as a lack thereof.

How specific does your info have to be?

[as2]

Originally Posted by macmad

A 'County' would probably be the UK equiv. to a state. Even though in the US, states contain counties

I agree - counties are probably the equivalent, but loosely.. We don't really have the same structure here.

[as2]

Originally Posted by lurkalot

Different system. Non are really equivalent to states in the sense of U.S. states. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Island is probably the closest equivalent in the U.K..

Sorry, just another link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Government

and a link plus quote:
"The United Kingdom consists of four countries: England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. This page shows the counties for the first three countries; Northern Ireland is included on the Ireland page.
These countries are divided into counties, but counties are grouped together unofficially to form regions. For example, Wessex is not an official county, but is the name of the region consisting of Wiltshire, Somerset and Dorset. And Wessex, along with Devon and Cornwall, is referred to as the West Country.
This can be confusing when looking at vacation rental listings. Some sites list by county, but others list by these unofficial regions.
Use this page to learn the counties. You can find a good map showing the counties on Pictures of England.
The official tourist web site for England, Visit Britain, shows the unofficial regions mostly as I have listed them below. The Eyewitness Guide breaks the regions up somewhat differently and I used some of their divisions below. Visit Britain: Maps of England" http://www.slowtrav.com/uk/maps/uk_counties.htm

Not gonna help you much but just to show that you're not the only one confused by the current "standardized" system of U.K. sub-division or perhaps better described as a lack thereof.

How specific does your info have to be?

How can you say England, Scotland, Wales and NI are the equivalent!?!?

They are separate countries.

It is fairly difficult to separate the UK down into the equivalent of states. When looking at counties they are defined geographically, but also play a part in the structure of the UK at a local and regional government level, much like the difference between states in the US.

[torsoboy]

Originally Posted by lurkalot

Different system. Non are really equivalent to states in the sense of U.S. states. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Island is probably the closest equivalent in the U.K..

Sorry, just another link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Government

and a link plus quote:
"The United Kingdom consists of four countries: England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. This page shows the counties for the first three countries; Northern Ireland is included on the Ireland page.
These countries are divided into counties, but counties are grouped together unofficially to form regions. For example, Wessex is not an official county, but is the name of the region consisting of Wiltshire, Somerset and Dorset. And Wessex, along with Devon and Cornwall, is referred to as the West Country.
This can be confusing when looking at vacation rental listings. Some sites list by county, but others list by these unofficial regions.
Use this page to learn the counties. You can find a good map showing the counties on Pictures of England.
The official tourist web site for England, Visit Britain, shows the unofficial regions mostly as I have listed them below. The Eyewitness Guide breaks the regions up somewhat differently and I used some of their divisions below. Visit Britain: Maps of England" http://www.slowtrav.com/uk/maps/uk_counties.htm

Not gonna help you much but just to show that you're not the only one confused by the current "standardized" system of U.K. sub-division or perhaps better described as a lack thereof.

How specific does your info have to be?

Well I'm glad to see I am not the only one confused. I don't really know how specific to make it.. it is for when they are entering address information when they buy something, they would select the State/Province from a droplist.

For those of you living in the UK, what is the typical format of your address? Does it include a "State" type of thing? For example, an address in the US is like this:

My Name
House Number Street Name
City, State, Zipcode

[Diggory Laycock]

My Name
Street Address
Town
County
PostCode

[torsoboy]

Originally Posted by Diggory Laycock

My Name
Street Address
Town
County
PostCode

Looks like "County" is the winner then. But with there being multiple countries that make up the uk, don't you have to put the country in there somewhere?

[Diggory Laycock]

No, not really.

[Diggory Laycock]

http://www.abcounties.co.uk/counties/list.htm

[macmad]

Originally Posted by torsoboy

Looks like "County" is the winner then. But with there being multiple countries that make up the uk, don't you have to put the country in there somewhere?

The UK isn't really large enough (but don't tell them that)!
The postcode (zip) is the important thing. A letter will find its way with an address consisting of just house number and post code. A town/city is handy, county un-necessary. I think its rare in the UK to have the same town name in different counties, as happens in the states, so a short address is not so ambiguous.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Diggory Laycock

My Name
Street Address
Town
County
PostCode

What Diggory said.

But bear in mind that if you're designing this thing you'll probably need to leave two lines for street address. And that the international format will include "UK" after the postcode.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by macmad

The postcode (zip) is the important thing. A letter will find its way with an address consisting of just house number and post code.

Yep. But again, if designing it don't leave a small space or make the field numeric-only for the house number - some people don't have house numbers. My house "number", for example is a name with the following character quantity: "Xxxxx Xxxxx Xxxx".

[lurkalot]

This link may also clarify the current Royal Mail address requirements.

http://www.royalmail.com:80/portal/r...200078#4300060

[macmad]

Originally Posted by lurkalot

This link may also clarify the current Royal Mail address requirements.

http://www.royalmail.com:80/portal/r...200078#4300060

Good link! And from the Royal Mail address requirements:

You do not need to include a County name provided the Post Town and Postcode are used.

[Oisín]

Also note, if you're making this for a more international 'audience' than just the US and UK, that you should never make 'State' or 'County' a compulsory field for all countries!

It's all fair enough that you need a state in a US address (would be fairly difficult finding the place without it), but in many (most) other countries, that's not so. It annoys me a great deal when online stores have this US-centric viewpoint of addresses, and just says something like, “Please specify a valid State” when I try to enter in my address correctly. I then have to figure out what to write in that dumb, compulsory field where 'State' goes.

For the record, this is the form of Danish (and most Scandinavian) addresses:

[First name] [Last name]
[Road name] [Road number], [Floor] [Side/Number/Letter/Other]
[Postal code] [City/Town]

Nothing more, nothing less. There is no Danish equivalent of county/state for an address (we have counties and municipalities and all that, of course, but they're administrative units only, not in any way relevant, or even incorporable, into addresses).

Certain places have even shorter addresses, such as my parents' house in Sweden, which does not even include a road name/number in its address:

[First name] [Last name]
[House name]
[Postal code] [City/Town]


Also note that certain countries write addresses in completely different ways; China, for instance, writes everything 'backwards', like this:

[Country] [Province/City-province] [District/Area] [Postal code]
[Road/block/'item' name] [Number] [Floor/Room/Other]
[Last name] [First name]


The best way I ever saw this managed, was an online that had an extra field at the bottom. There was an option you could tick, which had a text next to it that went something like, “Select this box if your address does not, for one reason or another, confirm to standard customs as laid out above. Please fill out your address (including your name, postal codes, country, etc.) exactly the way it should be written in the field below”. That worked very well, since you could then make sure your address was correct, and not mangled in any way. Checking that option then made the page ignore all the fields above for billing/shipping address purposes (although some of them, such as the country and name fields, were still used for the online store itself).

[torsoboy]

Originally Posted by Oisín

Also note, if you're making this for a more international 'audience' than just the US and UK, that you should never make 'State' or 'County' a compulsory field for all countries!

That's a good point. Right now the field IS required, but I will change that thanks to your comments.

And as someone pointed out above, yes, there are two lines provided for the address.

The biggest reason for the required State/Province in the US is for tax reasons. Right now you only need to pay sales taxes on products bought/shipped to an address in a state that you have a physical presence in, so the State helps determine the tax rate to charge.

Thanks for all of the information everyone, it has helped out quite a bit.

[residentEvil]

simply go to amazon.co.uk and see what their fields are for shipping in the UK. i bet they have it right.