Editing Postal code (section)

==== Reserved and Excluded characters ====
[[Postal codes in the Netherlands]] originally did not use the letters 'F', 'I', 'O', 'Q', 'U' and 'Y' for technical reasons. But as almost all existing combinations are now used, these letters were allowed for new locations starting 2005. The letter combinations "SS" ({{lang|de|[[Schutzstaffel]]}}), "SD" ({{lang|de|[[Sicherheitsdienst]]}}), and "SA" ({{lang|de|[[Sturmabteilung]]}}) are not used, due to links with the [[Netherlands in World War II|Nazi occupation in World War II]].

[[Postal codes in Canada]] do not include the letters D, F, I, O, Q, or U, as the [[optical character recognition]] (OCR) equipment used in automated sorting could easily confuse them with other letters and digits. The letters W and Z are used, but are not currently used as the first letter. The Canadian Postal Codes use alternate letters and numbers (with a space after the third character), formatted ANA NAN.<ref name=GreatData.com>{{cite web|title=GreatData.com (a licensee of Canada Post data)|url=http://greatdata.com|access-date=8 February 2013|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130402154507/http://greatdata.com/|archive-date=2 April 2013}}</ref>

In Ireland, the [[eircode]] system uses the following letters only: A, C, D, E, F, H, K, N, P, R, T, V, W, X, Y. This serves to avoid confusion in OCR, and to avoid accidental double-entendres by avoiding the creation of word lookalikes, as Eircode's last four characters are random.