Americans, how are front doors of houses and apartments marked?

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  • Americans, how are front doors of houses and apartments marked?

    In my country, the front doors of apartments and sometimes houses bear a plaque with the last name of the person/family inside and, in my screenplay (set in America), I wanted to write a sequence where the protagonist finds out someone's name by following them home and seeing the name on their apartment door, but it occurred to me that in American films I always hear people referring to apartments as A3 or B4, as if they're marked by that kind of letter-number combo and not the name of the occupant. Is this so?

    Would there be any way for a person to find someone's name or last name out by following them to their apartment or house? Maybe by matching the apartment number to a name on their mailbox (if the mailbox is marked with both name and apartment number)?

  • #2
    Hi Dimitri001, the typical thing would be for the surname only to be on the mailbox rather than the door. Hope that's helpful. Good luck!

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    • #3
      It's rare for people to post their family name on either the home or the mailbox, especially in modern times. Names are sometime posted on directories inside apartment buildings in cities. Garden style apartments that have mailboxes posted in the community don't typically have names either.

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      • #4
        For whatever little it might be worth, I have lived in a few different apartments and now a condo, here in Los Angeles. For the most part, the mail boxes had the apartment number on them. For one or two of them, I put our last name on a little piece of paper in the mail box door. It just slid into the tiny window of the box with the number above it. (It was an option.) But we found it helped (sometimes) with distracted mail people. Our new mailboxes in this building are numbers only. Nothing else.

        The call box on a friend's apartment has their last name and the apartment number - #3, for example. The call box for our building is last name only with the dial code to ring us. No unit number. It's a movie so you could just say, this one place does it this way, most likely. Though verisimilitude does frequently help, of course.

        And I don't recall any house I lived in, or friends or neighbors did that had their name on the door. Seems like I remember on occasion some had mats out front with "The Smiths" or "Campbell Family." But that was very rare. Usually on the mail box by the street, as Kites noted. I'd tend to think this is at least partially due to Google Maps Street-View, social media, and just more & more nuts out there. People are probably a bit more careful in today's world.

        Hope this wasn't too much info.
        Last edited by Done Deal Pro; 12-20-2021, 11:28 AM.
        Will
        Done Deal Pro
        www.donedealpro.com

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        • #5
          My comments refer to customs in the American South, which still retains a little bit of genuine American culture (though what remains is fast disappearing).

          The name is unlikely to be on an apartment door, though that is not an impossibility. Some people decorate their doors with various things, and that could include a plaque. It would be the choice of the individual living there. Mats in front of the door sometimes have names on them. A name on a door, or on a plaque beside the door, would be more likely for a house, not an apartment. You do not see a plaque even on a house very often, but they must still be on a few houses here and there.

          I have lived in apartments where all the mailboxes were in a common location. Of course, the boxes always have address numbers. But sometimes people made a small label with a name and put it onto the box or above it or somewhere convenient.

          Now everyone is paranoid, and I do not know how common these older practices are. But you could certainly use them in a screenplay.

          "The fact that you have seen professionals write poorly is no reason for you to imitate them." - ComicBent.

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          • #6
            I don't think I've ever seen anyone's name on an apartment door, and definitely not on house doors. I think (a few years back) I used to see names on mailboxes, but I don't see that anymore either. I hadn't even thought about it in the last 15 or 20 years. I think in your story, it would be more likely that your character would see the apartment number and than find a directory of some kind -- as muckraker mentions.
            STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I'm a wannabe, take whatever I write with a huge grain of salt.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Centos View Post
              I don't think I've ever seen anyone's name on an apartment door, and definitely not on house doors. I think (a few years back) I used to see names on mailboxes, but I don't see that anymore either. I hadn't even thought about it in the last 15 or 20 years. I think in your story, it would be more likely that your character would see the apartment number and than find a directory of some kind -- as muckraker mentions.
              When you say a directory inside the apartment building, would that be a book kept somewhere in the lobby or a board displayed in the lobby with apartments and names or...?

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              • #8
                A Google search is your friend:

                Apartment Directory

                House Number
                “Nothing is what rocks dream about” ― Aristotle

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Dimitri001 View Post

                  When you say a directory inside the apartment building, would that be a book kept somewhere in the lobby or a board displayed in the lobby with apartments and names or...?
                  It would have to be an apartment building big enough (and maybe fancy enough) to have a directory. That's not that common either (at least where I've lived).

                  EDIT: I think the easiest way is just to assume the apartment building has a lobby and directory (or at least a directory).
                  Last edited by Centos; 12-24-2021, 01:43 PM.
                  STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I'm a wannabe, take whatever I write with a huge grain of salt.

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                  • #10
                    A lot of buildings where you have to be buzzed in have digital directories. You page through the names electronically. Maybe that would work with your story.

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