UK postcards - item description

[mainlypostcards]

Why do postcard sellers regularly put Buckingham, Cambridge, Oxford, etc in their item description, when they really mean Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire, etc.? I just picked these 3 counties, but it also applies to numerous others. It is extremely annoying to any collector of postcards of "county towns" when doing a town search to come up with more results for the rest of the county then for the actual town.

You only need to look at my about me page to know that I live in Buckingham - I collect postcards of Buckingham (amongst other cards) and about once a fortnight I do a search to see if anything new has been listed. However, this is not a Buckingham exlusive problem; I've seen the same phenomena with almost all -shire counties.
Last night I performed a search for Buckingham in the Buckinghamshire postcard category on another site. The result: 42 hits; 11 of Buckingham Palace, 10 of Buckingham, 2 had "near Buckingham" in the title which is fair enough - the rest should have had Buckinghamshire rather then Buckingham in the title.

Tonight I did the same search in the same category here. The result: 37 hits, but only 15 of them had Buckingham mentioned correctly; the rest should again have read Buckinghamshire.

Sellers: if you really want to put the county in the description, either put the full name or shorten it to Bucks, Cambs, whatever, but don't just remove the shire bit as it could be a real nuisance and could even lose you business, if a buyer got annoyed enough about it!

[OldPostcards]

Hi Marianne

Thanks for pointing this out as alot of postcard sellers may not realise the disadvantages of listing that way. I have not done this myself to my knowledge, but will certainly remember not to do so any time in the future either!

All the best to you.

[astral276]

For anyone not sure of the correct abbreviations: http://www.gazetteer.co.uk/section3.htm#table1

[somersethedge]

my other gripe is postcard dealers who think that if a place is in the London Borough of XXXX that it must be London when in fact a lot of them should be in the counties...

EG. Ruislip is in the London Borough of Hillingdon but the postal address is Ruislip MIDDLESEX, or Richmond (London Borough of) is in Surrey.

It annoys me no end when at a fair I ask for Ruislip and am told it's filed in london and is then shown a box with 500+ cards in it..... Time to walk away and move on to the next dealer.

[mrsandman]

Saving time maybe ?

[OldPostcards]

mmmm.... I don't think anything that saves time at the expense of displeasing buyers and potentially losing business (not to mention plain old doing it wrongly!) is worth it. I think Marianne is right to point this common mistake out.

[mainlypostcards]

I've just performed the same search for Stafford in Staffordshire. I think I got 31 results of which 17 were incorrect; i.e should have been Staffordshire.
Apart from it being annoying to those collectors of county town postcards, I can't see it serves any purpose whatsoever; in that form it's certainly not a "keyword"
If I want to look for let's say Aylesbury or High Wycombe postcards I would type those towns in my search; most certainly not Buckingham and if I wanted to look at Buckinghamshire as a whole I would type Buckinghamshire and not Buckingham. The same would apply to any other counties.

Mrsandman: Given that the postcards are already listed in the subcategory Buckinghamshire (or whatever other -shire county), I don't really think the county name is necesarry at all - would be more time saving to cut it out altogether in any shape or form.

[bykimbo]

Mrsandman: Given that the postcards are already listed in the subcategory Buckinghamshire (or whatever other -shire county), I don't really think the county name is necesarry at all - would be more time saving to cut it out altogether in any shape or form.

Ooh... but that doesn't allow for Google and other searches, does it? My books are all books, listed under books, but I still try to fit "book" into the title, since it's a popular search term.

[mainlypostcards]

Ooh... but that doesn't allow for Google and other searches, does it? My books are all books, listed under books, but I still try to fit "book" into the title, since it's a popular search term.

In that case we should put postcard; or again the full name of the county rather then an abbreviation - part of the problem I suppose is the number of characters allowed in the title field.

P.S. I hate shopping and window shopping. Maybe I am too down to earth and just put the title or author of the book I want. Bought a simple household item today; just typed the name of the item in the search, without even bothering to go into the correct catergory and just picked one of the results that came up!

[somersethedge]

hate to say it marianne but..... I do where possible.... I class them as keywords