|
Dear Ms. Cards Etiquette, I just took over the HR department at a small business. I’m looking for ways to bring a more personal touch to the way we do things, and while it’s pretty easy to find nice things to do for existing employees (we just started a birthday bonus program, for instance), I’m wondering what we can do to make new hires feel welcome, right from the start. Any ideas? - HR Newbie First of all, I think your new policies sound like a wonderful idea! Too many employers make the mistake of thinking a paycheck is all the thanks their employees need. It’s the little ways you go above and beyond the basics that really boost company morale. Of course, you’ll be investing more in your long-time employees than your new hires, so keep it simple, but personal. Why not send a nice Welcome card to their home address? If the newest employee was hired into an important position, you might include a small welcome gift, like a gift certificate to a popular nearby lunch spot or coffee shop. You could also put the card on their desk, so it’s waiting for them on their first day on the job, maybe with a coffee mug and a handful of pens and pencils, or something else they’ll find useful. Whatever little “extras” you may or may not include, the important, personal part of the gesture will be the card. Have everyone in the office (or everyone in their department, depending on the size of your office staff) sign the card, with a little welcome message from each person. Then, when the new employee is meeting everyone around the office, they’ll already have names to attach to the faces! PS. Don’t forget birthday cards! Everyone likes to get a card on their birthday! Tags: business-how-to, Greeting Card Etiquette, welcome cards, Welcoming-a-new-employee Dear Ms. Cards Etiquette First off, congratulations on your (Future) wedding! Secondly, there are two ways to address a wedding 1. Living together: Write their names on separate lines, in alphabetical
For the inner envelope, use the same convention, but using only their
2. Not living together: Send the invitation to the person you are closest friends with. For the outer envelope, address it to that person only:
For the inner envelope, write both names, with your closest friend’s
The conventions for addressing the outer envelope also apply to any other correspondence with an unmarried couple, in any situation where a formal address is appropriate. Tags: Addressing-wedding-invitations, Greeting Card Etiquette Dear Ms. Cards Etiquette My wife and I have a score for you to settle … I’ve always signed greeting cards “Yours Truly,” but she insists that “Sincerely” is more appropriate for personal correspondence. I think it’s a matter of preference. Can you straighten us out on this one? Thank you! Yours Truly, Well, Mr. Smith, in a way, you’re both right. Yours Truly conveys a more formal tone than the simple Sincerely, so you could argue that Yours Truly is better saved for formal and business correspondence. But, as far as I know, there are no hard-and-fast rules for specifically when to use which one … so, it is fundamentally a matter of preference. If the two of you had any money riding on my answer, you can put your original bets back in your pockets now, because I’m calling this one a tie! If it’s actually a major point of contention with family greeting cards, maybe you could compromise with “Sincerely Yours”? Tags: Greeting Card Etiquette Dear Ms. Cards Etiquette, What color envelopes should we use for our company greeting card mailings? I think having envelopes that color-coordinate with our cards would help them stand out, but my supervisor insists that white is the only appropriate color for a business mailing. -Barbara Good question, Barbara. For regular, everyday business mail, I would tend to agree with your supervisor: white is the most standard color for business correspondence. However, for holiday or special event mailings, color-coordinated envelopes can be a lovely and attention-getting touch. Another option would be to use white envelopes with colored linings, or to put your cards in colored envelopes, and then insert those into slightly larger white outer envelopes. While these options are a bit more expensive than simply using a single standard white envelope, they each create a very polished and distinctive look to your card correspondence. If your promotional budget allows, lined envelopes or colored inner envelopes might be a great way to reach a compromise with your supervisor! Tags: Greeting Card Etiquette, Uncategorized Dear Ms. Cards Etiquette With primary elections going on, and presidential campaigns going into high gear, I’d like to help support my favorite candidate. Would it be OK to send cards to my client list on behalf of him? Politically Motivated Dear Political, In a word, no. From a strictly business perspective, this is one great way to convince any clients with opposing viewpoints to take their business elsewhere. A lot of businesses choose to display campaign signs in their windows during election season though, which could be an alternate option, but it involves the same risks. Rather than stumping for a particular candidate in your company mailings, why not send out a non-specific patriotic card, encouraging everyone to register to vote? If you’d like to support a specific candidate, I’d recommend making a contribution to their campaign, or perhaps a contribution to the political party of your choice, rather than broadcasting your political views to your clients. Tags: business-how-to, Greeting Card Etiquette Dear Ms. Cards Etiquette My boss is throwing an engagement party this month. I’m already strapped from the holidays! Do I need to bring a gift? I’ve never been to an engagement party before. Not Trying to Be Cheap in Long Island Oh dear, Trying. If it were just a friend inviting you, then a small gift would be totally appropriate, but these things are always so much more touchy when work is involved. Of course you are not obligated to buy your boss a gift, ever. It is pretty well universally understood that an employee (unless you’re very well paid) has a lot less money than their superiors. However, I well understand that you still feel like you should bring something. There is a nice way out of the gift-giving obligation you feel. Bring a bottle of wine or champagne, or some flowers for the table (if it is in the boss’s home). That way you don’t look like a cheapskate for bringing nothing, but since you’ve brought something everyone can enjoy, you also don’t have to worry about looking like you’re trying to “buy off” the boss’s favor with a personal gift. A congratulations card with any small gift you give is important just so your boss knows what it is you brought. However, you really don’t need to bring anything. A congratulations card alone is perfectly acceptable. Tags: Greeting Card Etiquette Dear Ms. Cards Etiquette, -Unsigned I guess I’ll just call you “Brown” then?
OK..But what does that really mean in your situation? Proper grammar for signing a card would be:
The only time you’d use an apostrophe for the whole family would be if your last name was “Brown” and you were showing ownership:
Now, let’s make things a little more confusing. Let’s say your last name is “Browns” — with an ‘s’ at the end. To sign the card, you would still say
If, however, you wanted to show something owned by one of the Browns, you would add an apostrophe s to the end just like if it were a singular word (because it is one individual):
If, however, you want show something the entire family owns– many people owning it — then you add the apostrophe to the end of the word after the ‘s’. So, for example, when sending out party invitations, you would say
Clear as mud? Tags: Greeting Card Etiquette I was recently married and now I am writing my Thank you cards, I am finding out several guests did not give a gift of any kind, am I obligated to send them a Thank you any way (just for coming to my wedding)? I did have a couple of people come up to me at my wedding and told me they forgot our gift and would get it to me later, well later has come and gone and I never did receive anything. I think these people did forget, should I remind them? And again do I send them a Thank you, because if they did forget and don’t get a Thank you they will think that I have no manners and was just looking for the gift? -anonymous The short answer is yes, you should send thank you cards to everyone who attended your wedding. Some of your guests may have been rather strapped for cash at the time of your wedding. Some of the “we’ll send the present along later” folks may have genuinely forgot, and some of them may have been having financial hardships and been embarrassed to share details. You just don’t know, and you certainly don’t want to remind them they did not get you a gift if they can’t afford it. (And there is a lot of people with financial hardships these days…no matter what their outside appearances may be.) The primary purpose of having a wedding is to celebrate a joyous event in the new couple’s life, and to gather together all the friends and loved ones to celebrate. People these days have busy lives, and it takes a lot for people to get together. Guests at a wedding are not required to give a gift. Sure it’s a nice thing to do, but it is not a mandatory thing. Their presence is their best present to the couple. The primary purpose of wedding thank you cards is to thank everyone for making time to celebrate the couple’s nuptials. If they happened to give the couple a gift in addition to that, then the thank you should also include a note regarding the gift as well. CardsDirect thank you cards can be personalized to save you quite a bit of handwriting and provide a nice variety to match any new couple’s tastes. Best wishes to the bride and groom! Tags: Greeting Card Etiquette, Thank You Cards, Thank-you-notes Dear Ms. Cards Etiquette, My friend from college has a very serious illness. I’d like to send her a get well card, but it seems inappropriate since she may not actually recover from this debilitating disease. I live in Alaska and she lives in Kansas, so visiting her is difficult, and frankly may not happen before the end of her life. While we are not as close as were in college, we still talk a couple times a year. I’d like to send something, but I’m not sure what to send or what to say on the note when I do send it. Please HELP! Befuddled in Barrow, Alaska For temporary illnesses and injuries, there’s the ubiquitous Get Well card. For deaths in the family, there’s the Sympathy card. For everything else, including your friend’s unfortunate situation, Befuddled, there’s the Thinking of You card. It’s a flawless stopgap option for any situation where you simply don’t know what to say … serious or terminal illnesses, divorce, anything in the “I’m so sorry, and there’s nothing I can do to fix it” category, really. But sometimes, even the most well-meaning greeting cards really do fall short of the situation at hand. In your case, Befuddled, I’d make an effort to visit your friend as soon as possible, or at the very least, give her a call on the phone. Kansas is indeed a long way from Alaska, but you may be able to find a discount last-minute fare if you look online and/or call the airlines. In a small community like Barrow, you may even find a private pilot who’d be willing to fly you to the nearest major airport at a discount or for free … it’s certainly worth asking around! As for what to say on your card, I’m lacking my usual “3 step plan” for this one. Say how sorry you are to hear the news, mention that you are trying to arrange a visit and ask if/when she’s most able to have a guest (because you are trying to arrange a visit, aren’t you?), and let her know if she ever needs someone to talk to, you’ll be happy to hear from her. You might wish to enclose a picture of the two of you in happier times. I don’t know that there’s much else you can do, Befuddled. Best of luck to both you and your friend! Tags: get well cards, Greeting Card Etiquette, Thinking-of-you-card In the most recent issue of In Touch Weekly dated Oct 8, 2007, it is reported that Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise still have not sent out Thank You cards for their wedding that happened last year on November 18. Apparently, even the stars find writing Thank You cards a chore. Ms Cards Etiquette does find it amusing, however, that all the gossip magazines are blaming poor Katie for this faux pas, when in fact, both parties in a wedding should be responsible. This is the 21′st century after all, not 1955. Lucky for the Cruises that it is never too late to write a thank you card. And, since they are reported to have had more than 150 guests at their lavish Scientology ceremony, they are also lucky that you don’t have to write more than a few lines on a Thank You card to get the point across. Since they have waited so long, they may wish to write an extra line or two explaining why their thank yous are tardy. If, however, they are too busy for that, just a simple “Thank you for the wonderful gift, we get a lot of use out of it.” is still appropriate. I’ve written a few tutorials on Thank You cards that can be found here just in case Tom or Katie need some assistance on writing their Thank you notes: Salvation for Late Thank You Cards 3 Steps to Perfect Thank You Notes Thank You Notes from CardsDirect Tags: Greeting Card Etiquette, Thank You Cards, Thank-you-notes |
OK, Brown, according to the