Washington DC Naming Best Practice

[Anonymous]

We have some leads that are located in Washington DC and I'm struggling with how I should sort these across the City/State field. I have a handful that have "Washington D.C." as the city with the state being nulled out, but I thought it might be wise to have City = "Washington", State = "DC".

Is anyone aware of a best practice for this particular issue?

Thank you!

[Casey_Grimes]

Hi Mark,

As usual, "best practice" means "the practice your team is willing to do." Personally I prefer to do city as Washington, state as DC for standardization purposes (since, as you mention, there are always records that do otherwise, such as leaving a state blank, but that messes with any geosegmentation you may want to do for the United States.) I'd honestly just pick a standard that works for you and your team and set up some maintenance campaigns to ensure any incoming records meet that format.

[Anonymous]

We do what both you and Courtney had mentioned.

In your example City = Washington and State = DC

I wouldn't be leaving the State blank though.

[Josh_Hill13 · Accepted solution]

DC=State and City=Washington is the post office approved method.

You can do whatever you want of course.

[Dan_Stevens_]

We do the same.  For State, we spell out "District of Columbia"