State Abbreviation List for All 50 States

Full state abbreviation list

Read across each row: the state, its postal code, then the traditional form used in news writing. Where the last column says the name is not abbreviated, news style spells it out even in short lists.

The traditional forms in this table follow common news style. Some older references use slightly different spellings, such as Kans. for Kansas, Nebr. for Nebraska or Oreg. for Oregon. Those are not wrong, just less common today.

Postal code or traditional abbreviation: when to use each

• Mailing addresses: always the two-letter code, with no period and no comma needed before the ZIP code. Example: Austin, TX 78701.
• Online forms and drop-down menus: the two-letter code. Many forms only accept those two capitals.
• News stories: the state name is spelled out in the body of the story. Traditional abbreviations show up in datelines, lists and short labels.
• School papers and books: spell the name out in sentences. Save codes for tables, charts and citations if your teacher allows them.
• Casual notes and texts: anything clear works, and most people use the postal codes.

The M states people confuse most

M is the first letter of eight states, and their codes trip up almost everyone. These searches are among the most common on the site, such as "me state abbreviation," "ms state abbreviation" and "mo state abbreviation."

A trick that helps: several codes pair the first letter with a later consonant in the name. Mississippi becomes MS, Montana becomes MT and Maryland becomes MD. Missouri, Maine and Massachusetts simply keep their first two letters, MO, ME and MA.

Other look-alike codes

The M states are not the only trap. Several groups of codes look alike or break the pattern you might expect.

• The A states: Alabama is AL, Alaska is AK, Arizona is AZ and Arkansas is AR. Many people write AK for Arkansas by mistake.
• The I states: Iowa is IA, Idaho is ID, Illinois is IL and Indiana is IN.
• N codes: Nebraska is NE, not NB, and Nevada is NV.
• Two Virginias: Virginia is VA and West Virginia is WV.
• Codes that match other short forms: OK is also the postal code for Oklahoma, MD also means medical doctor, and CO is both Colorado and the chemical formula for carbon monoxide.

Washington, DC and the territories

The postal system also gives codes to places that are not states. The capital is DC, for the District of Columbia; in a sentence, writers usually prefer Washington, D.C. Puerto Rico is PR, Guam is GU, the US Virgin Islands are VI, American Samoa is AS and the Northern Mariana Islands are MP.

Military mail has three codes of its own: AA, AE and AP, which stand in for a state on addresses for service members overseas. Those letters describe a mail region rather than a place on the map. For codes outside the United States, see country, city and airport codes.

How to write a state abbreviation correctly

1. Two capitals for postal codes. Write NY, not Ny or N.Y., on an address line.
2. Periods for traditional forms. Calif., Conn. and Fla. all end with a period. Two-word states put a period after each letter, as in N.J. and S.D.
3. Do not mix the systems. "Seattle, Wash." and "Seattle, WA" are both fine; "Seattle, Wa." is neither.
4. No abbreviation alone in a sentence. Write "She moved to Oregon," not "She moved to OR."

Postal codes of two letters date to the 1960s, close to when ZIP codes arrived, so that addresses would fit on one line and be easier for sorting machines to read. The older forms are much older and were made for people, not machines. For general rules on shortening words, the how to abbreviate guide covers periods, capitals and plurals.