What’s more romantic than receiving a handwritten, proper letter in the mail? Here to encourage charming old world letter etiquette, every Tuesday Vanessa or I will be highlighting a specific aspect of crafting letters. With any luck, we’ll inspire you to prepare yourself a steaming mug of Earl Grey tea, grab your favorite pen, and sit down to a quiet evening of letter writing. It’s not a lost art yet, and we want to keep it that way! You’ll thank us twenty years from now when you have a box full of letters, instead of forgotten emails, to look back on.
This week, I’m starting from the outside–how to craft the perfect envelope!
A dear friend of mine, a fellow English major, recently celebrated a birthday and I knew that he would appreciate an envelope formally crafted. I took my inspiration from Emily Post–lining the envelope with paper chosen specifically for him and addressing the letter properly (and neatly).
Here’s some tips I gleaned from Emily herself that helped me through the process.
On addressing the envelope:
- Married Women: Emily asserts that a widowed or married woman “should always continue to use her husband’s Christian name, or his name and another initial, engraved on her cards. She is Mrs. John Hunter Titherington Smith, or, to compromise, Mrs. J. H. Titherington Smith, but she is never Mrs. Sarah Smith; at least not anywhere in good society.” I’m not quite sure how I feel about this one. I’m all for preserving that old world charm, but perhaps this rule needs a little bit of a feminist updating, if only for the fact that many women (women who I’m sure meet Emily’s standards of “good society”) keep their last names nowadays.
- Miss: Miss is only appropriate for girls 16 or younger.
- Jr: Jr should never take the place of Mr. Instead, it should be addressed: Mr John Smith, Jr.
- Take care to use Dr., Judge, and The Rev. as appropriate
- While I’m not sure how well divorcees would take to this tip, Emily suggests that, “A woman who has divorced her husband retains the legal as well as the social right to use her husband’s full name, in New York State at least. Usually she prefers, if her name was Alice Green, to call herself Mrs. Green Smith; not Mrs. Alice Smith, and on no account Mrs. Alice Green—unless she wishes to give the impression that she was the guilty one in the divorce.” Use this tip with caution!
On lining the envelope:
Choosing which type of paper to line my envelope with proved to be a breeze! I was encouraged by Emily’s note that “colored linings to envelopes are at present in fashion,” but bored by her suggestion of that “thin white paper, with monogram or address stamped in gray to match gray tissue lining of the envelope is for instance, in very best taste.” I wasn’t going to all of this trouble just to line the envelope in boring gray! In the end I settled on a print I found at a local paper goods store that would probably be much too eccentric for Emily’s taste, but that I thought was pretty. Next time I line an envelope, I think I will make a point to use a pointed envelope, as I think they’re a bit more visually appealing.
My Lined Envelope
- Newspaper
- Wrapping Paper
- Old Sheet Music
- Collaged Food Labels
- Magazine Advertisements
- Old or Recent Photographs
- Pages from Illustrated Children Books
- Or, my personal favorite, an outdated map like these envelopes featured at Penned and Pretty!
Look forward to more letter writing tips (and Emily Post wisdom) next Tuesday!
Need help lining an envelope by hand? Read this from Wedding Crafter.
Emily Post quotes from her book Etiquette, published in 1922.
