Miss Manners: Addressing mail

[cereta]

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Almost all of the examples I now see on how to address invitations are totally different from what I was taught in school many years ago. Have the rules changed, or are young people these days making up their own etiquette rules?

I was taught that for a married couple, the correct address would be " Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Jones" and "Mr. and Mrs. Patrick White," not "Mr. Ben and Mrs. Elizabeth Jones" and "Mr. Patrick and Mrs. Taylor White." I was also taught that the male's name came first on the envelope.

Please set the record straight before too many young brides commit a faux pas and look uneducated.

GENTLE READER: Yes, some rules have legitimately changed, and yes, unauthorized people who make up their own rules are often unintentionally offensive. But come to think of it, the old standard that you cite also sends some people into a tizzy.

Miss Manners wishes everyone would just calm down.

There are couples who use the Mr. and Mrs. form you learned (the only one in which the gentleman's title comes first) and they should be so addressed. But there are others who prefer to be addressed more as individuals for various reasons, some of which are eminently sensible, although society used not to recognize them.

All that takes now is one extra line on the envelope:

Dr. Angelina Breakfront

Mr. Rock Moonley

or:

Mr. Oliver Trenchant

Mr. Liam Lotherington

or:

Ms. Norina Hartfort

Mr. Rufus Hartfort

Is that too much effort to ask?

Comments

[cereta]

THANK YOU. Long rant redacted to just...THANK YOU.

[jadelennox]

Oh, I'm so glad Judith Martin has relaxed about this one! Years back she used to be totally keen on

Dr. Angelina Breakfront
Mr. Rock Moonley

and

Mr. Oliver Trenchant
Mr. Liam Lotherington

but she did say that the proper term of address for a m/f couple who share a surname was Mr. and Mrs. Hisfirst Herfirst. (She was totes down with non m/f couples and different surnames.)

That being said she's always said that people who use etiquette to make other uncomfortable or miserable are being impolite jerks.

[watersword]

I have been so fond of Miss Manners and Judith Martin's portrayal of her for literally decades now, and I regret it not even a little.

[cereta]

I especially love the "Doctor" example, because I will take a lot with good grace, but "Mr. and Dr. His Name" would bug me a LOT. That's MY degree. I did the work for it.

Interestingly, two of the most conservative men I know addressed their wedding invites to Dr. MyName and Mr. HisName. It's not hard.

(I don't actually use my title socially, because academics usually don't, but still.)

[kaberett]

(I mean if I ever actually finish this PhD I will use Dr as my honorific, if only because it's a gender-neutral title that is already built in to most systems and I get very tired of fighting over Mx, but I'm aware I'm a slightly atypical use case. ;)

[fox]

We were taught a lot of things in school years ago that are no longer applicable today. Plate tectonics, for example, was an amusing little idea until way more recently than you'd think. We keep learning and progressing in so many areas - why shouldn't etiquette be one of them?

In other words, PREACH ON, Miss Manners and Her Children.

[ellen_fremedon]

Right? I was taught in school to put two spaces after a period.

[elialshadowpine]

There's an actual reason for that! It wasn't just something done as a flourish or such. It was because the typeface used in typewriters (Courier) was such that it was extremely difficult to distinguish the end of a sentence. You needed two spaces for it to be obvious.

This continued to be the case up until the mid-00s, until the very last hangers-on (the publishing industry, mostly) ditched the idea that Courier/Courier New were the ONLY ACCEPTABLE TYPEFACES. You don't need two spaces to tell that it's the end of a damn sentence in Times New Roman.

[azurelunatic]

Yessssssssssss.

[korafox]

*riotous round of applause*

And yes, I made up my own etiquette rules when I was addressing wedding invitations and yet no-one showed up to the ceremony to throw buckets of fish heads etc. at me.

[xenacryst]

Miss Manners, telling you WHERE TO SIT, yet again.

♥

[redbird]

The odd thing is that this is still coming up in 2017, with that sort of fake-helpful phrasing from the letter writer. I know Miss Manners has addressed it before, including noting that even in the days when more people were happy to be addressed as "Mr. and Mrs. John Doe," the multiple-line form was appropriate for households other than married couples, including such utterly respectable situations as a widow living with her daughter. They might have shared a surname, but that sort of old-fashioned style didn't call for "Mrs. Rock and Miss Ruby Star."

[amadi]

To this day, my widowed mother and I, who share a home, continue to get holiday cards and event invitations addressed to "Mrs. Firstname Lastname & (Almost always misspelled version of Amadi's birth first name)" so I'm 43 years old and I'm an afterthought who doesn't even merit a last name.

And then there's my father's family, who make it worse with "Mrs. Deadfather Lastname & (Misspelled version of Amadi's birthname)."

[deird1]

Have the rules changed, or are young people these days making up their own etiquette rules?

That's... kinda how rules change.

At any rate, does it really matter? Whether it's an official rule, or just something these specific people want to do, the important part of something being "manners" is that it makes people feel comfortable. If a certain form of address makes people feel more comfortable, why not oblige?

[moem]

I've always found the American habit of calling a woman by her husband's first and last name utterly weird. It's as if it's meant to make a woman completely disappear as a person when she marries. Last name is one thing, but can she at least keep her first name?
I'm glad there's a shift happening in that habit.

Here in the Low Lands we almost never combine titles with first names. You're either Jaap Janssen or Mister Janssen, but never Mr. Jaap Janssen; you're Alexandra Janssen or Doctor Janssen, but not Dr. Alexandra Janssen.

[naath]

It's British too (further "Mrs Jane Smith" implies she is divorced, at least according to Debretts), my Mother prefers it and one friend does too, but most people I know would hate to be addressed as "Mrs John Smith" even if they are "Mrs Smith" which of course married women often aren't these days.

If I marry guests are getting an email. Paper is soooooo last millennium.

[cereta]

There is a crusty etiquette rule in the States that a divorced woman is Mrs. Jane Smith, while a currently married or widowed on is Mrs. John Smith, but I doubt many people under 30 know that. My mom's been widowed for 36 years, and for that matter, became Mrs. "Jane Smith" even before he died. Of course, she's also weirded out by me not taking spouse's last name, so onse step forward...

[cereta]

I always get a little weirded out in British mysteries when someone refers to a marries woman as "Mrs. Phillip" or "Mrs. Lance." It's generally in multigenerational, well-to-do households, where there are three or four "Mrs. Densingtons" around, but as customes go, it always brings me up a bit short.

[vass]

"Dear Miss Manners: Will you please smack down my young, newly married, female relative?"
"Gentle Reader: No."

[amadi]

The line break feels weird to me. Why not "Dr. Angelina Breakfront and Mr. Rock Moonley" and "Mr. Oliver Trenchant and Mr. Liam Lotherington" which reflects that they are, in fact, in relationship with one another and not just partners in a law firm or something?

[cereta]

I wondered about that, too, actually.

[ambyr]

Probably because, practically speaking, it would require writing in really tiny print? Invitation and card envelopes are often quite narrow.

[melissatreglia]

THANK YOU, MISS MANNERS!

Seriously, the LW sounds so arrogant. "My way is the only legit way! Tell everyone else they're wrong for me!"

Also, nowadays brides don't always take their husbands' last names. Sometimes they keep their maiden names, or even combine his and her last names into a hyphenate one.

Like:

Julie Burns and John Miller

become

Mr. & Mrs. Burns-Miller.

or they stay as

Mr. Miller and Ms. Burns

That's totally a thing too.

(And personally, I actually like putting names in alphabetical order, when I'm addressing people formally. Best way to avoid the appearance of favouritism.)