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# System prepended metadata

title: Canada Road Suffixes

---

# Canada Road Suffixes

However, in Canada, it is [sometimes](https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/2022-December/010621.html) but [not](https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/2022-December/010624.html) [always](https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/2022-December/010598.html) the practice to abbreviate city quadrant suffixes and omit ordinal indicators.  For example, "6th Street Northwest" might be tagged as "6 Street NW". There is no set policy as to which locations in Canada use the fully-expanded name and which locations use the abbreviated format. The practice is more prevalent in certain parts of the province of Alberta, however, locals familiar with the situation [note](https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/2022-December/010621.html) that the exact reason for this tagging practice is [unclear](https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/2022-December/010620.html). The quadrant suffixes are spoken verbally in their expanded form, however some have posited that this spoken form of the NW-SW-NE-SE quadrant suffixes are [not abbreviations](https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/2022-December/010605.html) but rather an [idiosyncratic local pronounciation](https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/2022-December/010622.html).

Mappers should consult the talk-ca mailing list in order to determine which convention applies in a specific province, region, city, or neighborhood in Canada. Data consumers, especially navigation applications, should also consult the local community in order to determine the specific rules about whether a given area's street names need to be expanded before sending them to a text-to-speech (TTS) engine.