South Carolina sits on the Atlantic coast between North Carolina and Georgia, and it has been written as S.C. in print since colonial times. The code you type into a shipping form today is a 1963 clean-up of a much older habit.
Why the code is SC
ZIP codes went live on 1 July 1963. To make the bottom line of an address readable by sorting equipment, the Post Office Department (the US Postal Service since 1971) needed city, state and ZIP to fit a fixed width, so in October 1963 it published a list that capped every state at two capital letters and no periods.
South Carolina's name is two words, so the code takes one initial from each: S from South, C from Carolina. All ten two-word states were solved that way, which is why NC, ND, SD, NH, NJ, NM, NY, RI and WV read as pairs of initials instead of as clipped single words.
SC itself was never in dispute. The old form, S.C., had been standard in atlases, court citations and newspaper datelines for well over a century, so the reform amounted to deleting two full stops. Single-word states had the harder ride. Massachusetts had to abandon Mass. for MA, and Nebraska shipped in the October 1963 list as NB before the Postal Service changed it to NE in 1969, because NB collided with New Brunswick on Canadian mail.
Codes people confuse with SC
| Code | State | Why the mix-up happens |
|---|---|---|
| NC | North Carolina | Same second word. The two were one colony until the 1712 split, and the codes differ by a single character, so handwriting and autofill both go astray. |
| SD | South Dakota | Same first letter and same directional rule. Scanning quickly, the eye registers S plus a consonant and stops reading. |
| ND | North Dakota | NC, SC, ND and SD form a two-by-two grid. Pick the wrong direction and the wrong name and SC lands on ND. |
| WV | West Virginia | Another direction-plus-name code, but the order catches people out. The direction letter always comes first, so West Virginia is WV while plain Virginia keeps VA. |
Quick facts about South Carolina
USPS code: SC
Capital: Columbia
Largest city: Columbia, one of the minority of states where the capital is also the biggest city
Region: South, on the Atlantic coast
Statehood: 1788, one of the original thirteen
Population band: 5 to 10 million
Charleston is the name most visitors know, which is why the capital question trips people up. Columbia sits inland in the middle of the state and outranks Charleston on city population.
Where you will see SC
- Mail. SC belongs on the final line of an address, after the city and before the ZIP, in capitals with no periods.
- College sports. USC means the University of South Carolina inside the state and the University of Southern California everywhere else, so national broadcasts label the Gamecocks as South Carolina to keep the two apart.
- Pro sports. No NFL, NBA, MLB or NHL franchise carries SC. The nearest teams brand themselves Carolina, which covers both states at once.
- Crosswords. A clue reading "Palmetto State: abbr." is asking for SC. The palmetto is on the state flag.
- Data fields. The international form is US-SC. On its own, SC is the ISO country code for the Seychelles, which is why a few overseas checkout forms reject it in a country box.
Learn the codes by playing
Statedoku builds a daily grid out of state facts, so SC and SD stop looking alike after a week.
Play today's puzzle →Common questions
Is SC South Carolina or South Dakota?
SC is South Carolina. South Dakota is SD.
What is the capital of South Carolina?
Columbia, which is also the largest city in the state.
Why is South Carolina not just S?
A lone S would not separate it from South Dakota. Every state was fixed at two characters in 1963 so machines could read the address line.
Was South Carolina abbreviated differently before 1963?
It was printed as S.C. with periods. The 1963 reform removed the punctuation and kept the letters.