Table Settings: Insider’s Guide To Informed Adulting In America

ACROSS AMERICA — Young adults fully pledged from the family nest may need to learn this skill: the importance of setting a proper table versus wrapping a fork, knife and perhaps a spoon in a paper napkin and calling it good to go.

Setting a table with shrimp, salad and dinner forks, teaspoons and soup spoons, bread plates and stemware, and even finger bowls may seem pretentious as social norms become more relaxed.

Your boss won’t see it that way when you’re invited out to dinner to meet the partners. Your future in-laws may not, either. At the very least, you need to know how to navigate all the forks, knives and spoons, and which direction to pass the butter (from the right to the left, because most people are right-handed).

One thing all the etiquette experts agree on is that a tablecloth and cloth napkins aren’t negotiable. And don’t fuss too much with the napkins.

Emily Post, the 1900s New York socialite who became the arbiter of etiquette disputes, declared fancy foldings that give napkins the appearance of fans or swans to be in bad taste. In the 1960 revision of “Emily Post’s Etiquette,” she declared napkins should be placed on the plate or charger plate — not to the left of the forks, or under the forks if space is tight.

Decades later, Post’s guidance on setting your table for a formal dinner remains the gold standard. Here are more things to know:

The dinner or charger plate goes in the middle of the table setting. The utensils are arranged on either side in the order the courses are served. Working your way outward from the left of the plate, place the salad fork, the dinner fork and the fish fork. On the right, the salad knife, the dinner knife, the fish knife (the cutting edges of all knives should face the plate), the soup or fruit spoon, and the oyster fork.

The bread knife is placed diagonally on the butter plate with the handle to the right. Visualizing the dinner or charger plate as a clock, the bread plate is placed above the forks, between 10 and 11 o’clock.

Glass and stemware are placed on the right, above the knives and spoons. There may be as many as five, and are arranged in the order to be used. The water goblet is placed directly above the knives; to the right and left are a wine glasses — one for red and one for white — and a sherry glass or champagne flute to accompany a first course or opening toast.

» More on this from EmilyPost.com

(Editor’s note: “An Insider's Guide To Informed Adulting In America” is a weekly feature on Across America Patch to help people navigate life’s tricky situations and get their ducks in a row.)