The rule that settles everything else
Set from the outside in and the table explains itself. The fork used first is the one furthest from the plate; the knife used last is the one nearest it. No cover needs a diagram at the side, and no guest has to ask, because the arrangement repeats the order of the meal.
Everything else is a consequence of that rule. If a course is not being served, its cutlery is not on the table. Cutlery laid for a course that never arrives is a promise the kitchen did not keep, and it reads as a mistake even to guests who could not name what was wrong.
One cover, exactly
Sixty centimetres of table per person, measured from the centre of one cover to the centre of the next, and not less. The plate sits a hand’s width from the edge. Forks to the left, in order of use. Knives to the right, blades towards the plate, with the soup spoon outside them. The dessert spoon and fork lie above the plate, parallel to the edge, spoon above fork with the handle to the right.
The side plate sits to the left of the forks with its butter knife across it, blade inward, and no more than four pieces of cutlery on either side. Where a menu needs a fifth, a course is served with fresh cutlery rather than a wider fan.
Glass and wine
Glasses sit above the knife, in the order they will be used, largest nearest the plate. Three at most at a household dinner: water, white, red. A fourth is a tasting menu, not a dinner. The glass is filled to a third and refilled before it is empty rather than after.
The host pours first for the guest of honour, and tastes only where the bottle is unfamiliar to the house. Where the wine runs out, the host changes course quietly and explains nothing to the table. A household’s wine service is judged less by what is poured than by whether anyone at the table had to notice it.
What sits in the middle
Salt and pepper travel in pairs, one pair between each two covers, and they are never separated: a lone pepper pot is the most common small error on a formal table. Low flowers or none, because a table is for talking across. No candles lit before the room is dim enough to want them.
A name card sits above the plate, written by hand where the house writes by hand, with the form of address the guest is entitled to and no decoration beyond it. Any object on the table that a guest must move before eating is an object that should not be there.
The order the evening runs in
Guests are seated by the host, not by preference. The guest of honour is at the host’s right, the second guest at the hostess’s right, and the table is arranged so that no married pair sits together and no two people who were seated together at the last dinner are seated together again.
Service moves from the left and clears from the right, and no plate is removed until every guest at the table has finished. The table closes together: coffee, then the host rises, and the evening ends for everyone at once rather than for one person first.