As I write this, It’s coming up on the holidays and one of the requests that we see a lot more of at this time of year is monogramming.
It makes sense – adding a monogram, single initial, or an icon can raise your gift giving to a whole new level! As the holidays approach, we spend a lot of our time labeling clothing, household items, gifts for Christmas (stockings!) and Hanukkah.
At the same time, I often see a bit of confusion about the lettering placement of monograms. I get it – it isn’t straightforward!
A monogram for an individual is an arrangement of their first, middle, and last initials.
How the letters are arranged is different for men, for women, and for married couples.
For the sake of example, I’ll use our names: Wendy Marie Rossman and Robert Michael Rossman. (He goes by his middle name, so you know him as Mike!)
The practice of putting the last name in the middle of the monogram is reserved for women. So for me, (Wendy), the organization of the letters in my monogram would be “WRM”.
For men, on the other hand, the letters tend to stay in order. So Mike’s monogram is: RMR. (I didn’t use to know this and always thought that putting them in their original order was wrong. Little did I know…)
Married couples have a number of design options available to them. If they share one last name, we place both of their first initials on either side of the last name. So Mike and I would be WRR, which stands for: Wendy Rossman Robert.
If the members of the married couple have kept their own last names or chosen to hyphenate, we use both of their first and last initials. No one ever said that a monogram could only have three letters! :-).
If a full monogram seems a bit too much, another option is to use just the first initial of the last name. This is a great choice for shared household items like pillows and towels! (And since Mike uses his middle name which can be confusing, it might make sense for a couple like us to go with the initial of the last name rather than our full monogram.)
As you can see, there are a number of different ways that you can turn names into a monogram; some lean on the traditional while others have stepped out into a more modern design. I’ve included some examples in the images below. Please check them out and if you have any questions at all, contact us and we’ll be happy to help!
