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First off I would like to thank you for the wonderful work you do in your etiquette books. You all do such great work. Have you ever considered publishing a book on military etiquette? I know it might not be a specialty of anyone who works at the institute but there are so many differences between the civilian world and the military world, and so many intricacies in military etiquette that a book on the subject would be very helpful. Which leads me to my question, when sending out an e-mail to many people, all of different rank, should you address the e-mail to the highest ranked individuals, Gentleman, or would it be more appropriate to use Army lingo like ALCON (All Concerned)? If you address it to the highest ranking individuals then what would you use if the e-mail is sent to one officer and many enlisted, would it be Captain So-and-So, Sir, or something else? Thank you for your reply! On the one hand if I send it as All or ALCON it seems very distant and impersonal and seems to neglect respect for the higher ranking individuals. On the other hand if I use Sir, Gentleman etc. it seems like you are making those not of higher rank insignificant.
Hi Adam. There is great new book about military etiquette by Cherlynn Conetsco and Anna Hart call “Service Etiquette, Fifth Edition”. Peggy Post recommends this work highly and we use it ourselves to reference service etiquette questions. http://www.nip.org is a site where you can find this book if you search under general references.
Now that holiday card season is here, I’m confronted once again by a problem that my husband and I have struggled with both in our own lives and those of our friends. When we married a few years ago, I – like the vast majority of my friends – kept my maiden name. So far, addressing things like holiday cards and thank-you notes has been fairly straightforward; we address it to “Bob Smith and Susie Jones,” or whatever. Now, however, our group of friends has begun to have children, and there are babies and proud parents everywhere. The children tend to have either hyphenated names – “Kylie Jones-Smith” – or the name of the father. Since holiday cards and thank-you notes are less formal than, say, wedding invitations, how do we include the children and both parents on the envelope without getting needlessly cumbersome? “Bob Smith, Susie Jones, and Kylie, Madison and Jacob Jones-Smith” is nice and inclusive, but awkwardly lengthy. We ourselves are completely comfortable with being referred to as “The Jones-Smiths,” but it did take some conversation to get to that point, and we don’t want to assume that others are comfortable with that usage. Neither do I want to assume that any woman who chose to kept her maiden name would be comfortable with “The Smith Family,” even if she’s the only one whose name isn’t Smith. The obvious solution is to ask; that’s what we’ve been doing, but I was wondering if there’s a generally accepted guideline for this kind of thing. Any thoughts?
Bob Smith and Susie Jones and Family should do nicely.