The abbreviations: This command: from-table --url https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28apc_002.htm Fails with a recursive permanent redirect. I was able to cut and paste into localc from the URL though. I think Levenshtein distance may not require us to concern ourselves with the abbreviations though. The code: Have a look at one_one_eg.py - it illustrates using fuzzywuzzy for fuzzy searching.