My first question here, so I'm not sure if this OT or not, so please bare with me.
Background: I don't live in US. I'm working with some data that I'm pulling from Adwords. Sometimes, I'm getting a city name as St. John and sometimes as Saint Ann.
So my question is, is there an accepted way on how people write a US city names which starts with Saint or is this just some random thing (or just specific to AdWords maybe)?
I'm asking this, because if for example I'll get both St. John and Saint John in the same file, should I consider them the same or should I be suspicious?
Best Answer
Both should be acceptable. There is usually one more common usage e.g. St. Louis, but you'll also find people referring to it as Saint Louis.
Take this example:
Wikipedia Page for St. Louis uses St. Louis repeatedly, but also in a few places has Saint Louis - see the caption titled "The Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis" or the related page:
Saint Louis Cuisine which relates to food from St. Louis.