alt Hacker NewsEmail is just like physical mail and thankfully just as endearingly human (sometimes).
Once upon a time (1970/80s) I lived on and off in a mystic land called West Germany. Our postal addresses ended with incantations such as BFPO 40.
Around 1985ish my granny send a Christmas card to us. I should note that she was at this time nearly seventy and sadly suffering from Parkinsons. She addressed the card, in rather crabbed but legible handwriting, to:
Graham and Heath BFPO 40
My mum's name is abbreviated - her daughter. At that time Rheindahlen (nr Moenchengladbach) had a pretty large contingent of Brits in it - it was HQ (BAOR).
The card arrived well before Chrimbo and it took about a week judging by the post mark, which was petty normal in those days. She shoved it into a post box in Ipplepen, nr Newton Abbot, Devon and it found its way to an obscure address in another country. I seem to recall she also forgot the stamp but it still got through.
I'm sure mail like that becomes a point of honour to deliver and HM PO and BFPO did the job admirably.
That attitude is how email MTAs are generally designed to work. They cling on to the good old days and sadly the world is a bit shit. Case sensitivity ... lol!
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New rule: when emailing someone, you need to include their name. If you do that, the email delivery gods will correct typos in your email address.
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Bill Bryson claimed to have received a letter addressed to ‘Bill Bryson, Writer, Yorkshire’.
I have some cousins who live in a small town in Australia where the houses have neither names nor numbers. You just address the envelope to ‘<name>, <street>, <town>’, and it’s the postie’s responsibility to know where everyone lives. (‘Postie’ is the official job title in Australia Post because it’s gender-neutral.)