If a street name ending isn’t in the wiki but is appearing a few times what’s the best practice in abbreviation?
I put a point in the discussion about having Gt for Gate as there are a lot of gates round here.
I’m also finding a few Heaths, Fields, Mews, Crofts - should I leave them as full spellings until a decision is reached?
Also locally is an Avenue Road - I’ve put it in as Avenue Rd, google has it as Ave Rd, which I think is wrong as Avenue is the name not a description.
Also should North South East and West be abbreviated to N, S, E or W if they appear in a street name? There’s a series of streets in Central MK called North 8th - North 14th St (and South equivalents) - the nameplates use North and South and Ordinal Numbers. Google abbreviates the direction term and spells out the ordinal giving on their maps a completely different description to the signs on the ground (North 14th Street becomes N Fourteenth St)
I’d leave anything not in the Wiki. I try to keep North, South etc when it’s acting more than just a direction, for example, South Park Rd not S Pk Rd, North End Rd, etc but Park Road South would be Park Rd S.
Avenue Rd
North 14th St
are what I’d go with though I would normally shorten North to N
As for additional short versions, we can add to the wiki but they need to be nationally recognised short versions! No good going with local convention for naming conventions.
I think we should be careful about abbreviating street types using non standard terms as this will definitely break TTS whenever it is officially allowed in the UK.
I did a quick test and the following abbreviations we currently use are correctly pronounced by Waze’s TTS:
Rd is pronounced Road
St is pronounced Street
Dr is pronounced Drive
Ln is pronounced Lane
Cl is pronounced Close
Blvd is pronounced Boulevard
Still unconfirmed: Bdwy, Ct, Gdn, Gr, Pk, Sq, Ter
I should be able to try most of those within a mile of my house. Had to run the gauntlet of Clifton Boulevard in Nottingham at rush hour though to confirm Blvd though :shock:
(Thankfully the traffic gods were nice and the queue was only about 0.5 mile rather then the usual 1.5, normally I avoid it!)
[Edit: updated with additional abbreviations that are confirmed as working in TTS]
I also reckon that any suffixes that are 3 or 4 characters don’t need to be abbreviated, such as Gate, Loan, Mews, Rise, Way, Walk and View. Road and Lane should continue to be abbreviated, as they are in common usage.
When you edit the wiki can you add an extra column to annotate which we’ve tested in TTS? I’ll try and do some driving on the coming weeks to confirm the unconfirmed ones.
Keep Green as Gn as it’s simpler, shorter and if needed, can be added. Rather not have a divergence since most of the SE and everything I’ve done is Gn not Grn
