Guides / Formal table setting

The formal table setting, explained

Fifteen pieces of silver and glass, and not one of them is there to catch you out. Here is the formal place setting drawn and numbered, the everyday one beside it, and the single rule that makes sense of both.

By Mr. Ashby, butler, retired. Updated 30 September 2026.

The formal place setting, numbered

1. Fish fork
2. Dinner fork
3. Salad fork (salad comes after the main course)
4. Service plate (charger) with napkin
5. Place card
6. Bread plate and butter spreader
7. Salad knife
8. Dinner knife
9. Fish knife
10. Soup spoon
11. Oyster fork (the only fork on the right)
12. Water goblet
13. Red wine
14. White wine
15. Champagne flute or sherry

The outside-in rule

The table is laid in the order the food will arrive. The fork and knife furthest from your plate are for the first course. When that plate goes, the next pair in is yours. That is the whole secret.

Read this way, the setting above is a menu. Oysters first, with the little fork on the far right. Then soup, then fish, then the main course, then salad, which at a formal American dinner comes after the main course. That is why the salad fork sits closest to the plate.

I laid the Family’s table with a wooden ruler for forty years, which I am told was excessive. In all that time only one guest began with the wrong fork, and he was a professor of medieval history. He did it with such confidence that half the table followed him.

The details that catch people out

• The oyster fork is the only fork on the right. Everything else with tines lives on the left.
• Bread on the left, drink on the right. Under the table, touch each thumb to its forefinger: the left makes a small b, the right a d.
• Your napkin goes in your lap as soon as you sit down. At a formal dinner in a private home, wait until your host has unfolded theirs.
• Once a knife, fork or spoon has been used, it rests on a plate. It never goes back on the tablecloth.
• The dessert fork and spoon lie above your plate or arrive with the pudding. Leave them alone until it does.

The everyday place setting

1. Dinner plate (salad plate may sit on top to start)
2. Napkin, to the left of the forks
3. Salad fork (outside: salad comes first)
4. Dinner fork
5. Bread plate and butter knife
6. Dinner knife, blade facing the plate
7. Teaspoon
8. Dessert fork (handle to the left)
9. Dessert spoon (handle to the right)
10. Water glass
11. Wine glass

At home the salad usually comes first, so the salad fork moves to the outside. The principle never changes: outside in.

Lost anyway?

Pause, and watch your host. Nobody has ever been faulted for doing exactly what the host does. And when you have finished, your knife and fork have one last job to do, which is explained in Knife and fork signals.