The size of the card of invitation varies with personal preference from four and a half to six inches in width, and from three to four and a half inches in height. The most graceful proportion is three units in height to four in width.
The lettering is a matter of personal choice, but the plainer the design, the better. Scrolls and ornate trimmings are bad taste always. Punctuation is used only after each letter of the R.s.v.p. and it is absolutely correct to use small letters for the s.v.p. Capitals R.S.V.P. are permissible; but fastidious people prefer "R.s.v.p."
The word "ball" is never used excepting in an invitation to a public one, or at least a semi-public one, such as may be given by a committee for a charity or a club, or association of some sort.
Invitations to a private ball, no matter whether the ball is to be given in a private house, or whether the hostess has engaged an entire floor of the biggest hotel in the world, announce merely that Mr. and Mrs. Somebody will be "At Home," and the word "dancing" is added almost as though it were an afterthought in the lower left corner, the words "At Home" being slightly larger than those of the rest of the invitation. When both "At" and "Home" are written with a capital letter, this is the most punctilious and formal invitation that it is possible to send. It is engraved in script usually, on a card of white Bristol board about five and a half inches wide and three and three-quarters of an inch high. Like the wedding invitation it has an embossed crest without color, or nothing.
The favour of an answer is requested Dancing
Kindly send reply to Three Mt. Vernon Square Dancing
(_If preferred, the above invitations may be engraved in block or shaded block type._)
Very occasionally an invitation is worded
if the daughter is a débutante and the ball is for her, but it is not strictly correct to have any names but those of the host and his wife above the words "At Home."
The proper form of invitation when the ball is to be given for a débutante, is as follows:
company at a dance in honour of their daughter
company on Monday evening the third of January
The form most often used by fashionable hostesses in New York and Newport is: