Address hygiene

Definition
Address hygiene is

"[t]he computerized process of analyzing postal address lists and modifying data in order to increase the accuracy of the data."

Overview
For example, a set of duplicate addresses may exist because the street address on one record is abbreviated, e.g., "Av.", and the other spelled out, e.g., "Avenue"; one task of address hygiene might be to spell out all abbreviations (e.g., "Dr" and "Dr." changed to "Drive", "Av", "Av." and "Ave" changed to "Avenue", "Rd" and "Rd." changed to "Road", etc...). More sophisticated techniques might include Zip Code correction, telephone area code corrections, name standardization, automatic checking of public records to check for irregularities and errors, as well as other cleansing tasks to improve data quality and create a more consistent and reliable database free of duplicate records.

Source

 * Consolidated List of Glossary Terms.