Louisiana's official abbreviation should be changed.

[jwolfer]

A lot of the two-letter abbreviations are a little squirrelly, but we're so used to them that we don't notice. The convention used by many states where they take the first and last letters of the state doesn't really make a whole lot of sense...were I given a blank slate and told to pick abbreviations, Louisiana would be LU, Pennsylvania would be PE (or maybe PN), Virginia would be VI (or VR if I needed to avoid conflict with the Virgin Islands) and Georgia would be GE. (ME for Maine is weird too, but every other possible second letter for Maine would conflict with at least one other state, so I can live with it.)

But we've had the same abbreviations for 50+ years now so it's not worth changing.

In the 1700s abbreviations used the first and last letters of the word commonly..  Md. Va. etc.. Or those 2 worded states were N.J.  N.Y. been around since the start

[jwolfer]

Anyone stupid enough to confuse Los Angeles an Louisiana deserves what they get.

A lady i worked with had a friend ask his secretary to make reservations for a hotel in New Orleans, LA. She could not find anything, she thought New Orleans was a suburb of Los Angeles...

Flying from Indianapolis home to Jacksonville, FL a Marine tried to get on the plane with headed to Camp Lejune.

" you can't fix stupid"

[jwolfer]

Pennsylvania would be PE (or maybe PN)

I can't see PN as state abbreviation, since in Spanish sounds like 'pene' which means penis .

(ME for Maine is weird too, but every other possible second letter for Maine would conflict with at least one other state, so I can live with it.)

In Italy they also use two letter abbreviations of its provinces (They have 110 of them , though I believe now they only exist on the maps). When in 1992 Crotone province was created, it turned out that any two letter combo was already in use: CR is Cremona, CO Como, CT Catania, CN Cuneo and CE Caserta. So Crotone had to go with KR instead (Which makes me to spell it Krotone).

How about KY? The joke about nasty tasting Kentucky jelly.

I am a Doctor or Chiropractic ( DC) and then medical doctors (MD). Both state/jurisdiction abbreviations. Imagine the confusion of a chiropractor with the last name Washington. Or a medical doctor with the last name Baltimore. MS means multiple sclerosis, MD muscular dystrophy. At least its not East and West Dakota. Imagine the fun with Fargo, ED

It all comes down to context.

[briantroutman]

...were I given a blank slate and told to pick abbreviations, ...Pennsylvania would be PE

I first recoiled in horror at your suggestion of PE, but then I realized you're not so wrong. I remember the shock of learning that "Pennsylvania 6-5000"  from the Glenn Miller song was PE-6-5000–not PA-6-5000 as I had always imagined. It was as jarring as that moment when you first see the faces instead of the vase.

La. never made sense to me, but then I realized that the USPS tends to use (x)A abbreviations for state names ending in the feminine "–a"  or "–ia"  suffix (Georgia, Pennsylvania, Virginia). This predates the modern two capital letter abbreviations–they were commonly Ga., Pa. (or Penna.), and Va. in the old days.

Whatever process was used to formulate the state postal abbreviations does seem rather "fuzzy" . It starts out very definitely and then devolves into confusion:

• Starting with the full list of states, take all two-word state names and use the initial of each word as the abbreviation
  (10 states - 100% compliance)
• Of the remaining, use the first two letters of the state name
  (19 states - 63% compliance - GE, HA, IO, KA, KE, LO, PE, VE, VI, MOntana, and TEnn or TEx could have been used but weren't)
• Of the remaining, use the first and last letters of the state name
  (12 states - 75% compliance - AA, NA, TE, and TS could have been used but weren't)
• Of the remaining, the rule seems to be "use the first letter and a relatively important consonant"

...leaving MO as perhaps the most nonsensical state abbreviation.

[Scott5114]

MO exists because MI conflicts with Michigan and MS conflicts with Mississippi. The O is the next available letter that doesn't conflict with anything. MO is probably more aesthetically pleasing than MU or MR, the other possible abbreviations.

The first-and-last letter convention may have been a common way of abbreviating in the 1700s, but it isn't now.

[jeffandnicole]

For anyone that watches "Are you smarter than a 5th grader", one of the questions Tuesday night was "What is the official abbreviation of Michigan?" 

Everyone got MI correct.

[kkt]

MO exists because MI conflicts with Michigan and MS conflicts with Mississippi. The O is the next available letter that doesn't conflict with anything. MO is probably more aesthetically pleasing than MU or MR, the other possible abbreviations.

The first-and-last letter convention may have been a common way of abbreviating in the 1700s, but it isn't now.

Mo was the abbreviation for Missouri long before the postal 2-letter abbreviations were set up. Government Printing Office (the official style manual for government agencies) and the Associated Press both used Mo.

[bulldog1979]

There exists a parallel system of two-letter state abbreviations for use by the US Coast Guard for vessel registrations. This system closely tracks what the USPS has, but there are 12 exceptions:

California is CF
Colorado is CL
Delaware is DL
Hawaii is HA
Kansas is KA
Massachusetts is MS
Michigan is MC
Mississippi is MI
Nebraska is NB*
Washington is WN
Wisconsin is WS
the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands is CM*, not MP.

*NB and CM used to be the USPS abbreviations as well.

These letter codes are most commonly found as the beginning of the registration numbers that are applied to both sides of the bow of a boat along with a state registration sticker. These decals function much like a license plate in a maritime setting.

[Scott5114]

^Frankly, KA and HA are the only one of those that makes any sense at all. Did these abbreviations predate the USPS ones?

[bulldog1979]

According to a posting on a different forum, the Coast Guard abbreviations originate with the Federal Boating Act of 1958, which predates the USPS abbreviations from 1963. The USPS standardized on two-letter state codes to save space on mailing labels so that ZIP codes could fit.