Voice

• Always word your invitations so you're writing in the third person. For instance, your invitation should read: "John and Sally Jones invite you to ..." rather than "We want to invite you to ... ." Regardless of whether you're throwing a housewarming party, or your parents are throwing your wedding, the third person is the most appropriate voice for invitations.
  
  

Punctuation and Capitalization

• Dont use punctuation at the end of lines in your invitation. Though it runs counter to everything you learned in English class, sentences within an invitation should be left open-ended, with no period to signify the end. Only capitalize the first letter of a line if it's a proper noun, such as a name, a day of the week or if it starts a new thought. A new thought would be a change from talking about a wedding ceremony, for instance, to the phrase "Reception to follow."
  
  

Names

• Always include full names on an invitation, both on the invitation itself and the address labels to the recipients. On a wedding invitation, the bride's full name is listed first, followed by a separate line for the word "and" or "to" (depending on the phrase you've chosen to announce the ceremony) and a new line for the groom's full name. Include the full name of married couples on the same line of an invitation label, presuming they share the same last name. Couples with different last names should be listed on separate lines, alphabetically.
  
  

Abbreviations

• Never abbreviate anything, with the exception of name prefixes, such as "Mr." and "Ms." If a person mentioned on the invitation or an invitation recipient has a military or religious title, such as "Reverend," spell it out rather than using an abbreviation. In the case of address phrases, such as "Street" or "Avenue," the word should also be spelled out completely. Similarly, times and years should be written out with words rather than in numbers.