Page:When You Write a Letter (1922).pdf/117

 There are announcements of births and deaths, engagements and marriages; there are invitations to weddings and dinners, and there is for the writer of these notes a correct form to be used and for the recipient something to be said or done and a proper time and a proper method of saying or doing it.

The formal note of invitation or announcement should be written or engraved. There is no more logical reason why it should not be printed than there is why one should not eat with his knife or keep his hat on in the house. Children used to be told that there was a danger of cutting themselves if they ate with their knives, but there is equal danger of wounding themselves with the prongs of a fork. There is really no reason why we should not eat with our knives excepting a conventional one. It is not the custom; refined people generally in English-speaking countries do not do it; and there is an end of the matter. The same thing is true of the printed announcement or invitation or calling card. It shows a lack of social experience, unacquaintance with careful social forms, it suggests the common and the