How to Address an Envelope to a Married Couple (minicast)

Welcome to another summer minicast from A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

We’re working all summer to prepare for a new season of brand new shows in the fall.

But in the meantime, we’re offering you some great calls that we weren’t able to squeeze into past episodes.

Some of the calls we get are not just about grammar or usage, but overlap into etiquette and rules of civility.

For example, when my wife and I were married, she kept her name since she and her grandfather are the last two people in her family line to still have it.

So we get a lot of letters addressed wrongly to Sarah Barrett or to Mr. and Mrs. Grant Barrett, even from people who know that she kept her last name.

One of our listeners, Emily in San Diego, has the same dilemma.

She’s a modern woman, and she’s bothered by the convention of addressing envelopes to Mr. and Mrs. John Smith.

Shouldn’t we also address the woman by first name?

See what you think.

So I work for a large nonprofit that works on behalf of the elderly.

And I work in the development department, so I write a lot of letters to donors.

And when we address the letters, I have been taught that we should address them if there’s a married couple and say it’s John and Mary Smith.

That we should address the letter Mr. and Mrs. John Smith.

And my mother would be horrified at that,

To receive a letter that was Mr. and Mrs. David Cox.

She’s not on there then.

And I suspect that there may be donors out there who share that opinion.

And so I expressed my frustration to people in the organization,

And they said, well, there’s no other way to do it that is grammatically correct.

Grammatically correct?

Yeah.

They said that if you say Mr. and Mrs. John and Mary Smith, that that’s wrong.

Really?

Well, now this is a tough one because you want to keep those donors happy, right?

You don’t want to leave any stone unturned or compromise what you’re doing at all.

And these donors, I mean, you may know their names, but they’re not personal acquaintances of yours, are they?

Most of them not.

I mean, a few of them, sure.

But most of them, we don’t know their preference.

And you want to do it differently, not just because your mother would be horrified, but you think it’s wrong to leave off the woman’s name.

Yeah, and also I think that part of the reason why this has been done this way is because we do serve a population that has to do with the elderly, then we tend to be serving older generation people.

Oh, boy.

Sure.

However, I think that our donor base is likely to be younger than what people really realize.

Because it’s their children who are donating in memory of them or something like that.

And also if we want to attract the next generation of donors, I really don’t think that there are very many women my age who would like to receive a letter that doesn’t have their name on it.

Right on, sister.

I’m with you on that, Emily.

Well, let’s talk about the choice that you offered, which was Mr. and Mrs. John and Mary Smith, right?

There’s a problem with that.

If we use the traditional form of address, Mr. and Mrs. John Smith, the reason that works is because we can’t actually traditionally call Mrs. Smith Mrs. John Smith.

That’s accepted, at least formally and traditionally in a conservative fashion.

But it’s never been accepted to call the man Mrs. John Smith.

And that’s the problem when you put the two honorifics at the beginning and then they have their two names.

The problem is that you’re kind of implying that both honorifics apply to both names the same way they do in the shorter form.

So it doesn’t really work.

Mrs. John Smith is not how we would ever address John.

We just don’t write letters that way.

Right.

But you do have two other choices.

And I don’t know that people who are really conservative about this sort of thing or prefer the very formal ways would be offended.

And I think you’ll find that some modern etiquette guides will include these.

One of the ways is to say Mr. John and Mrs. Mary Smith.

And then you get both names in there, and then the titles are next to the first name that they belong to.

But I kind of, just envisioning that in my head, it would look weird to people, I think.

I’ve never seen an address that looks like that.

The longer form, if you said Mr. John Smith and Mrs. Marie Smith, I don’t know.

There are problems with that as well.

What if we just lopped off those titles?

Would they look too naked then, you think?

Well, I don’t think so, and there are some parties here that would agree with you all and me on that.

But the more powers that be definitely want to maintain that formal part of it and keep the titles on there.

I have a solution for you, though.

Oh, you do?

Oh, hallelujah.

I know.

Just send two separate letters.

No.

One to John and one to Mary.

No.

Al Gore is going to be after you, Grant.

And not only Al Gore, but people already call us up and say, you send us too many letters.

There you go.

How about email?

Send them separate emails, then.

Do these people read email?

Well, when they send us a check, their email is not on the check.

Only their address is on the check.

Okay.

So you’re sending back thank yous.

Yes.

Well, how about, Emily, what about your original question?

Is it grammatical to say Mr. and Mrs. John and Mary Smith?

I don’t have a problem with that grammatically.

Do you agree?

I think it’s not about grammar, but it is wrong.

I think it’s unequivocally wrong.

What?

You can’t have Mr. and Mrs. John and Mary Smith because you can say Mr. John Smith,

But you can’t say Mrs. John Smith.

Does that make sense?

You can say Mrs. John Smith, but you can’t say Mr. Mary Smith.

That’s exactly right.

That’s right.

Okay.

Sorry, that’s exactly right.

You can’t say, and that’s the problem with putting the two titles, the two honorifics up there in front of both of the names.

They either need to be left off or done the traditional way or they need to be next to the first name that they belong to.

These are not good options.

These are not good options.

Well, I would say my advice to you is to do it the traditional way.

I think you need to assume that your audience is going to prefer and understand the dilemma that you’re in.

They’re going to prefer the solution over all the others.

So that’s one small step for feminism, one giant leap for your fundraising.

If you’re pinning the hopes of feminism on the way you address letters, then you’ve got big problems.

Well, then let’s just address it to Mr. and Mrs. Mary Smith.

You could do that. You really could do that.

If it doesn’t matter, let’s just use the woman’s name.

I think you’ll get a lot of strange phone calls, but maybe that’ll be a chance to open up dialogue and solicit more donations.

I don’t know.

Well, Emily, you’ve set us against each other here.

Well, that’s not unusual.

You have been listening to our show, then.

Yeah.

Well, gosh, what are you going to do?

I don’t know that we’ve been helpful.

What are you going to do?

Maybe I’ll bring this Mr. John and Mrs. Mary Smith up as another possibility.

And I think I will maybe look at some of those etiquette guides because I feel like other nonprofits probably have obviously run into this same issue and probably also have feminists working in them.

Or at least women who like their names.

And I guess my search continues.

We welcome your comments on this topic at our website, waywordradio.org, by email to words@waywordradio.org, or by telephone at 1-877-WAYWORD or 1-877-929-9673.

We’ll also post some links to etiquette guides that offer a variety of advice on how best to address envelopes.

That’s all for this summer minicast.

You can hear past shows for free on our website, as well as talk about our topics with other listeners.

Go to waywordradio.org.

For A Way with Words, I’m Grant Barrett.

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