Every 11 years, on average, the country`s leading manufacturer of fine writing papers publishes ”Crane`s Blue Book of Stationery: The Styles and Etiquette of Letters, Notes and Invitations.” ”Our Bible,” they say at Shreve`s, where generations of brides and debutantes and young marrieds have placed their orders. ”Couldn`t be without it,” they say at Tiffany`s.
Like books of etiquette-from Emily Post and Amy Vanderbilt to ”Miss Manners” and Charlotte Ford-”Crane`s Blue Book” is a reliable indicator of how we live. Formal stationery, after all, is the paper trail we leave as we pass life`s more important milestones.
Not that ”Crane`s Blue Book” addresses all eventualities. You`ll have to consult Charlotte Ford`s 1988 guide to modern manners (Clarkson Potter, $19.95) for the correct forms to deal with some of life`s messier little messes.
Pick a name, any name
Ford, divorced herself, gives three forms for telling the world your name as a new single. Consult Ford for the right way a single mother announces a new baby. Crane`s has grappled with the married mother who keeps her maiden name: ”Margie Maria Aponte/John Paul Romero/ are pleased to announce/ the birth of their daughter/ Amy Krystine.”
”That announcement form is new,” says Steven L. Feinberg, who as director of customer relations and training for Crane & Co. edited the 1989 Blue Book. ”It was a difficult thing to word, and it could still look as though they are not married.”
Earlier editions of ”Crane`s Blue Book” were published by the Engraved Stationery Manufacturers Association (the Dalton, Mass.-based paper company, founded by Zenas Crane in 1801, is one of the oldest members), and the old guides were to be found mostly in stores selling fine stationery. The new edition, however, is published by Doubleday and sells for $15 in bookstores.
Furthermore, the book has been redesigned to be used by the purchaser. Under each line of a sample wedding invitation is a line in smaller type explaining the reason for it. Once upon a time, store clerks performed this function. They`d been taught the rules by the Steven Feinbergs of the day who traveled store to store. But, with so much temporary help around, Crane`s has wisely armed the customer.
Role reversals
Times change, and in the 11 years since the last Blue Book, women have moved out of the home and are running many things, if not everything. A navy captain invites you to her daughter`s wedding. A certified public accountant announces the opening of her new office. According to Crane`s, ”the President and Mr. Washington” is the right way for a woman chief executive of the United States of America to issue invitations.
But judging by the names that Crane`s invented for sample stationery in the 1978 Blue Book, all public officials were men, and probably Anglo-Saxon. In that edition, the only woman performing a civil function was Mrs. Lewis Strauss who, as ”sponsor,” got to swing the champagne over the bow of USS Skate. But, then, her husband was in the Truman and Eisenhower cabinets.
In the 1989 edition, there are recognizably ethnic names marrying and having babies and setting up offices and issuing and answering invitations. In addition to invitations for Christian and Jewish weddings, the Blue Book gives the form preferred by Hispanic (and French) parents. ”The Hispanic market is a growing market,” Feinberg explains. Why no Asian names as samples?
”Perhaps in future editions,” said Feinberg. But stores specializing in engraved stationery can and will reproduce invitations in Hebrew, Cyrillic, Persian or Asian script.
”We ask the customer to send an exact copy in black ink on white paper so the engraver can copy the calligraphy exactly,” says Ruth A. Hammond at Shreve Crump & Low Co.
It`s a nightmare
Of all formal invitations, those for weddings are the most difficult to word these days. The reason is divorce. And second and third remarriages. Everybody wants to do the right thing, and the kind thing: Etiquette is also about kindness. But there are infinite complications. ”There are a lot of feelings involved, and the bride and groom are caught in the middle,”
Feinberg says. Take one of the real-life examples he has come across traveling the country for Crane`s:
”The father of the bride has remarried, and he wants his new wife on the invitation, and he wants people to know he is paying for the reception.” The Blue Book, and other social arbiters, take the position that the bride`s parents give her in marriage and so only their names should be on the invitation. ”An exception,” says Feinberg, ”might be if he had been her stepfather since the bride was 4 years old.” As for the wedding reception, that is a social occasion. ”We might bend the rules a bit and issue that invitation in the name of the father and his new wife.”
Despite our hectic lifestyle, people still like some formality. The wording of invitations may be arbitrary, but the reason is clarity. Correctly worded, an invitation tells you who, when and where. And properly interpreted, it is a guide to proper behavior. Etiquette books are really about appropriate manners, not meaningless ritual.
A Gatsby guide
The oldest of the modern etiquette books in America came out in 1922. It was written by Emily Post at the suggestion of Frank Crowninshield who edited Vanity Fair, and it was meant to guide the Gatsbys of this world, the New Money hoping to break into Society. Post`s touch was light, and her book was fun to read. The cast of characters included Mr. & Mrs. Kindhart who gave dinners, the Worldlys who gave dances and the Gildings who went to them, and Mr. & Mrs. Titherington de Puyster who were bringing out their debutante daughter. The 1988 Emily Post (Harper & Row, $29.95, if thumb-indexed) seems to have been invaded by faceless mutants called Gov. Hername Surname and Judge Hisname Surname.
Shrieking with wit, ”Miss Manners` Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior” (Warner paperback, $15.95) has Judith Martin`s own cast of characters. Daffodil Perfect marries Ian Awful III. In the modern way, they exchange not just vows but names, and leave the ceremony in a shower of hyphens. Their ”new address” card reads: ”Ms. Daffodil Perfect-Awful and Mr. Ian Awful-Perfect At Home After . . . ” (Martin`s latest, ”Miss Manners` Guide for the Turn-of-the-Millennium” (Pharos Books, $24.95) is new this fall.)
Ms.-givings
The use of ”Ms.” divides the authorities. Not all women like the abbrievation, but Ford and Martin condone it as reflecting current usage. There is the strong suggestion that Ms. survives because of laziness: It is used when you don`t want to bother to find out what the woman so addressed wants. ”I do not, personally, think `Ms.` is necessary (or attractive)
socially,” says the current Emily Post. Crane`s bans it altogther.
The previous Blue Book will never go out of style. It gives the forms for the myriad activities omitted in the bookstore edition: ordinations, commencements and graduations, art exhibitions, library dedications, stamp issues, inaugurals, civic pageants, club and subscription dances, charity balls, public dinners. The only really new form in the 1989 edition is the social business card.
”Business cards should not be exchanged during social occasions,” says the Blue Book. Hence, the new phenomenon of making hay in fern bars by laying your spiffy new social business card on a likely customer. (As the man said, the business of America is business.) Name and business phone number, that`s all that`s on a social business card. Still, that`s twice as much information as on the old, traditional ”calling card,” which is still limited to your name-on the theory that your friends know where to find you and the rest of the world doesn`t matter.
