Ellington

Last year, you watched in horror as Great Aunt Petunia criticized everything about your cousin's table, from the linen to the placement of the dessert fork. Well, Petunia's on the way to your house this year, so it's time for a brief refresher course.

Your basic, everyday table setting should include: a dinner plate, napkin (cloth for grown-ups, not paper), flatware consisting of a salad and dinner fork, a dinner knife and a soup spoon, and a water glass or goblet. If you're going formal, add a bread plate and butter knife, fish forks and knives (yes, they're different), dessert spoons and forks, and wine glasses—optimally one for red and one for white wine.

Place the napkin on the dinner plate, the bread plate above and to the left (at 10:30 on the clock) and the water goblet above and to the right (at 1 o'clock). Red wine glasses are above and to the right of the water goblet, at about 1 o'clock, and white wine below and to the right of the water goblet, at about 4 o'clock. If you serve a salad or soup, place those plates or bowls, already filled, on top of the dinner plate after guests are seated and have placed their napkins on their laps.

Here's the low-down on flatware layout: Place all forks for grasping with the left hand, and all knives and spoons with the right hand, no exceptions. So, forks go vertically on the left side of the dinner plate, and knives and spoons vertically on the right. Got it? The three exceptions to the vertical placement are the butter knife and dessert forks and spoons, which we'll deal with in a moment, but the left hand, right hand stuff still applies, as you'll see.

Align flatware so that diners can easily use the utensils from the outside, in. Thus, the smallest, salad fork, is on the outside left, and the soup spoon is outside right. The largest, dinner fork, is closest to the plate on the left, and the dinner knife is closest to the dinner plate on the right. Simple.

The rules for the hands apply to butter and dessert flatware, although their placement is horizontal: The handle of forks point to the left hand, handles of knives and spoons to the right. Place the dessert forks and spoons horizontally at the top of the dinner plate, the fork handle pointing left and spoon handle pointing right. Place the butter knife horizontally on the butter plate, about a quarter the way up from the bottom, handle pointing to the right hand.

If all else fails, enroll Petunia into setting the table or ask her to teach your kids how to do so or refer to the illustration above.

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