I don’t know about you, but I always struggle with how to address an envelope straight.  I mean, you’d think it wouldn’t be that hard, but the lines always seem to want to slant up or slant down.  That’s where The Lettermate comes in handy.  It’s designed specifically for addressing envelopes, so whether you want to keep it simple with plain old printing or block letter, or mix it up with some decorative lettering, it will help you keep everything straight — literally.

The Lettermate

It comes packaged in this sleeve.  Here’s the back, in case you were curious:

And mine shipped with a sheet of basic information.  I assume that’s standard.

Using the Lettermate to Keep it All Straight

There are other lettering guides out there.  And they’re okay, I guess, but they’re just “meh.”  The Lettermate is one of those products that excels because of attention to detail.  It’s designed to do this one thing, and it does it well.

First of all, the openings.  They’re actually big enough to write in.  Unlike some older templates I’ve seen, that will let you draw pencil lines you later have to mess with erasing, the Lettermate has spaces large enough that you can actually write inside the spaces.  The Lettermate itself is the lines.  (Descenders are just a tad tricky.  See here for tips on dealing with descenders.  If you use block lettering to start with, you won’t have to worry about that at first.)  If the situation calls for it, you can certainly use your Lettermate to just draw guidelines, but it’s capable of more.

There are also guidelines (and guide dots) to provide “landmarks” along the way across, helping with spacing.  These are particularly useful if you’ve opted to center your address.

There’s a ruler across the bottom.  That also can be used to help with spacing. It can also be used before you begin addressing, to figure out how much space you have and plan your design.  (I know, I know.  For some of us, “design” just sounds overly fussy for an envelope address.  And in many cases it might be.  But for those occasions when you’re doing something extra-special, the ruler will help you figure out how much space you have to work with where.)

There are also extra horizontal lines about midway up each slot.  The most obvious use for these is as a guide for the height of shorter lowercase characters.  However, they could also be used for other purposes if you’re going for the fancier effects — like showing where to place a decorative line.

See the Lettermate in Action

Okay, I didn’t want to get too far through addressing an envelope because I don’t want to be posting my friends’ or family members’ addresses online.  But here’s a start of one just to give you an idea.

And I know before mine came I wondered what it was like compared to various envelope sizes, so here’s some comparison for you.

The envelope all by itself at the bottom is a regular letter envelope.  As you can see, the Lettermate sticks up off the top, but there’s still room to use it.  (I lined it up even with the bottom-left for illustrative purposes, but if I were using it on this envelope I’d slide it a bit lower.)  At the top are (from the top of the stack to the bottom) a standard small notecard envelope, a regular greeting card envelope, and a large greeting card envelope.

Options

Creativity with this kind of thing is not really my strong point, so I’ll direct you to the Lettermate idea page for some great examples of gorgeous (but not overly complicated) lettering options.  (Hint: It’s more about combining styles of lettering than using complicated styles.)

This is a great tool to pick up for yourself, to use with the kids when they’re writing thank you notes or letters to Grandma, or to give as a gift — perhaps with some good-looking notecards or a nice pen.

If you’re in the US, you can order directly from the site linked above.  If you’re in Canada or Australia, you’ll need to order from their Etsy shop.