What are the rules for men's stationery?

In My Humble Opinion
61

I’ve never received a note on personalized stationary. I’m 52 and a lifelong Chicagoan. I think it’s considered antiquated up here. It’s a nice touch, but I don’t have that many opportunities anymore. My social calendar is wide open.

That said, there is no substitute for a hand-written note in certain circumstances. I keep store-bought blank cards around for the more personal communications, and the pre-printed cards for people like my husband’s father’s friend whose wife died. Standard hand-written pre-printed sympathy card for the distant friends, completely hand-written store-bought blank for closer relationships. I do store-bought thank you cards with a personal note, as well.

So…you go to the annual family picnic that the same cousin usually hosts. Do you send a thank you note for that? I don’t. To me, it’s too formal for family.

62

Well, maybe not a thank you note, but it’s always nice to get a little note in the mail, “It was so lovely to see you again! Everybody always enjoys your picnic so much.”, that sort of thing. I should send a lot more of those than I do - they really make people happy. I’m a little slack about that.

Another thing with the sending of handwritten stuff is that if you send letters to people, you get letters back. My grandmother lives in Pittsburgh and can’t hear worth a damn (she never could - had some kind of childhood fever, but now that she’s 93 she might as well be deaf) and it’s just impossible to have a meaningful phone conversation with her. She’s perfectly all there, though, and just loves to get letters - she’ll read my letters to everybody who comes by. So when I write her a nice, chatty letter she’ll write me one back, and the woman is 93 - every letter I get from her might be the last one I see. When she’s gone, I’ll be glad I have these things she’s written me.

In our modern world we rarely end up with written keepsakes anymore. When’s the last time you got something in the mail that was personal besides a Christmas or birthday card? Our grandparents and their grandparents and their grandparents kept letters as keepsakes; read them over and over again, passed them down to their grandkids. When your parents are gone, will you show your kids and your grandkids the e-mails they sent you? Will you even have them anymore? What will we have to remember how people really were, what they thought, not just how they looked in a picture?

63

Well, yeah, but I guess I’m unswayed.

That and it was to say that I don’t have any.

64

Zsofia, I should have mentioned before – if you do decide to go with correspondance cards for your husband, don’t worry about them looking like index cards. They don’t at all. In a nice ecru cardstock with navy blue printing – they will be beautiful, professional & classy. Especially with a nice lined envelope. I actually like flat cards better than foldovers.

Re: using paper for sympathy notes instead of boughten cards. It’s just so much easier. I always had such a hard time finding sympthy cards I like. I didn’t want a glurgy poem on the front, and I especially didn’t want a verse on the inside… Once I had to go to 3 card stores before I found one I could stand. That’s why I gave up on cards and bought nice letter paper instead.

Then I married my husband. He always wanted me to buy a card instead of just sending a letter on my good paper. He thought a letter looked cheap, like we didn’t want to buy a card. Finally, when his uncle died, I made my husband come to the card shop with me and told him to pick a sympathy card. He couldn’t find a good one, either. We went home and I showed him my beautiful Crane’s letter paper & envelope. He had to agree that it looked in no way cheap (although it would have been nicer if personalized! I wrote the sympathy note on my letter paper and have not bought a sympathy card since that day, 15 years ago.

65

Well, I think a lot of people like sympathy cards because they don’t know what to write when somebody has experienced a loss. I can definitely sympathize with that - I feel like my condolence notes are kind of stiff and formulaic: “Dear ____, I was so sorry to learn of your mother’s passing. We will all miss her and keep you in our thoughts. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” but then you think, so what? They probably sound fine to the people getting them.

66

Sympathy notes are absolutely the hardest type of letter to write. It takes me a good half-hour to write one, usually, and they are never longer than a paragraph or two. So I can sure understand why other people go with a card instead and I don’t hold it against anyone. For me, though, myself – I feel I need to write a real note.

67

Yes, I do, but not on personalized stationary. I use “thank you” cards and write a short, personal note in my own hand on the inside.

What an odd notion - I suppose if I stayed overnight in the home of someone I barely knew I would do this, but honestly, I’ve never stayed overnight except at the homes of relatives or extremely close friends. Friends so close, in fact, I’d find it vaguely insulting if they were to put on such formal airs and vice versa. Yes, profuse verbal thanks, perhaps a small gift upon my arrival, but a letter on formal, personalized stationary afterward as well? I have honestly never heard of that before!

Unless you’re suggesting that when I stay overnight at my parents’ home I write them a formal note thanking them for the privilege…?

No, I send a tasteful card, maybe some flowers or a donation to a charity in the deceased’s name if that is indicated as a preference, and if possible, a face-to-face appearance at a wake/funeral to express my condolences in person or if that is not possible a phone call.

In the business world I have only ever used the company letterhead or, in some instances such as holiday cards, materials provided by the ocmpany.

Honestly, I have no reason to purchase personalized stationary, it would be a waste of money for me. If I had an occasion for such a formal note I’d compose something appropriate on the computer, add some artistic touches, and use the printer to generate it. I suppose there are people for whom this sort of formal correspondence is a regular thing, in which case it makes perfect sense they’d purchase such a thing, but really, the whole thing strikes me as very 19th Century and an affectation. Also, very southern, which I note by the OP’s location field, is in fact where she lives.

68

I have stationary sitting unused in boxes that was given to me when I was, oh 10 or 12. Obviously, I just don’t have much use for this in my life. It’s not that I’ve never used stationary, it’s just really, really infrequent and getting more so.

I do agree with your point about written keepsakes - I still have the letters I received from my grandmother, with whom I kept up a steady correspondence for a decade and a half, but after she passed away I had few occasions to write letters. Some people write letters, some don’t. This is rather like some people read books and some prefer to watch movies. A century ago book reading was more common as there were fewer alternatives. 30 years ago letter writing was more common as we didn’t have e-mail and phone calls were perceived as much more expensive (and maybe they were - I wasn’t paying the bills back then, so I can’t recall the price to make a comparison with today) Personally, I’m just as happy to receive a phone call or e-mail from a friend or loved one as a formal letter as it is the communication I’m interested in and not just the medium.

I do have pre-printed thank you notes because that is such a common usage. There are many nice blank cards available that you can tailor to any occasion via a handwritten note inside. I find that just as convenient as personalized stationary, with the added bonus that I don’t have to worry about what to do with the rest of the box when I get married and change my name (well, only plan to do that once) or move and my address changes.

Or I could just make my own cards - buying blank stock and embellishing it is even cheaper than commercially produced stationary and, given I have an art degree and used to make my living as a calligrapher at one point I can certainly make it look nice and very classy - not to mention very personal. Except, of course, it does cost me time and I’m a rather busy person who must divide my limited waking hours so maybe this isn’t such a good thing after all. It would be VERY personal, after all, and more meaningful… at least to some people. The ones who wouldn’t accuse me of being “too cheap” to buy a card or “putting on airs” by too much formality.

I agree that is a good point of etiquette… but we must work in vastly different fields as I do not have “clients” nor can I ever recall being invited to a business dinner involving clients. As I said, if you are frequently in situations where this sort of event is common it makes a great deal of sense to purchase personalized stationary but, strange as it may seem to you, many of us simply never have these occasions in our lives.

Seriously - since I was laid off from corporate America last November I’ve been painting house for a living. Do you expect a personalized note from the contractor painting your abode, thanking you for your patronage of their business? After a hard day at work I even avoid shaking hands with my “clients” out of consideration for the fact not everyone wants heavy-duty exterior latex all weather white smeared on them. Although avoiding shaking hands sometimes seen as rude, restraint when paint be-spattered is actually more polite. Etiquette is about context, too.

69

Just a spelling nitpick:

Stationary - sitting in one place
Stationery - paper for correspondence