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Grammar girl here, I'm Minyeon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today, I have a little more cool history about zip codes.

We'll talk about hyphens with words such as re-enter,

and we'll talk about the word bougie.

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Last week, we talked about how to write zip codes,

and I included some history,

mentioning that they were first introduced in the United States in 1963,

which is true.

But two people wrote in to tell me about earlier codes,

called postal zones, that were introduced in 1943.

Barbara Hughes from Vancouver, Washington gave this example from her childhood.

She wrote, quote,

Prior to zip codes, the postal zone for East Cleveland was 12,

and we wrote our address like this.

East Cleveland, 12, Ohio.

The neighboring town was Cleveland Heights,

and that address was Cleveland Heights, 21, Ohio.

I presumed that these evolved into zip codes.

Addresses were written as city, postal zone, state.

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