Ink Friendly

Generator · Print-true

Printable name cards for gifts and place settings

To print name cards for gifts, set Card type to Gift tags, type one name per line and press Print. Each tag carries its name under a dashed circle that marks where to punch the hole for the ribbon. The same page makes tent place cards that read from both sides of the table, and blank cards to write on by hand. Every card size is stated in millimeters and drawn at true page size, and the names you type never leave your device.

Adjust

Blank prints one full sheet and ignores the name list.
Printed on every card, under the name.
Fixes the shuffled order, so a spoiled sheet reprints identically. With the order as typed it changes nothing.
A comma also starts a new card, so keep surnames on the same line as their first name.
Details
Sheet— Card— Cards— Pages— Seed—

Name cards for gifts

On gift tags with To and From rules, the name goes on the To line and the second line on the From line, so one entry in Second line signs the whole set. Without the rules, the name sits centered below the punch mark. Leave the names empty and fill in only the second line for a whole sheet of tags that all carry that line, such as the family a set of gifts is from. A list longer than one sheet runs onto as many pages as it needs, and the Pages readout counts them.

The Cards per sheet setting fixes the card size. At the default 12.7 mm margin in portrait, the five choices give these sizes, and a tent place card folds to half the height shown:

For the tags to come out at these sizes, print at 100% scale. Then cut along the hairline guides and punch each dashed circle with an office punch.

How this generator works

Each card is a rectangle with a stated size in millimeters. The printable area is your paper minus your margin, the layout divides it exactly, and the readout shows the flat card size and, for folding cards, the height of the folded tent. Layouts run from 4 to 20 cards a sheet. On A4, at the default margin and six to a sheet, each card is 92.3 × 90.5 mm and folds to 45.3 mm tall. Cut guides are hairlines on the true card boundary, and neighboring cards share one line, so a cut along it gives a card of the size the readout shows. When the names do not fill the last row, its spare cells still print at the same size with no name, which helps when a guest is added late. The whole sheet is SVG in real millimeters inside a viewBox equal to the physical page, and nothing is scaled to fit.

In tent mode each name prints twice, once in each half of the card, with the upper copy turned upside down so the folded card reads upright from either side. The two guide marks look different so they cannot be confused: a cut is a solid hairline on the card boundary, and a fold is a dashed rule across the middle with the word "fold" printed at its start while cut guides are on. Folding along a cut line, or cutting along a fold, wastes the sheet. Names are fitted by arithmetic: this mono face advances a stable 0.6 em per character, so the page knows how wide a name will print before drawing anything. The seed that fixes the order the names land in is printed in the page margin with the card size and the page number, outside every card, so a sheet can be reprinted exactly without marking the stationery. The optional second line, a table number for example, prints in smaller type under each name.

For card stock, 160 to 200 gsm is the range that feeds reliably and stands up on a table. Print at 100% or Actual size: a tent card only stands straight when the fold is exactly in the middle, and Fit to page rescales the sheet and moves the fold off center. Cut guides put a hairline of ink on every card edge, so if you want edges with nothing printed on them, switch the guides off and cut to a ruler. The name list keeps one card per distinct name, so two guests with the same name share a single card until you add an initial or a surname to one of them.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the name print twice, with the top half upside down?
Because a tent card is read from both sides of the table. Folded along the dashed line, the two halves stand back to back, so the half above the fold is drawn rotated 180 degrees about its own center, and the guest and the person opposite each see the name the right way up. A card with the name printed once leaves a blank face pointing at somebody, and you only notice once the folding is done.
What size are the cards, and how heavy can the paper be?
The card size follows from your paper, margin and layout, and the readout states it in millimeters. On US Letter with a 12.7 mm margin, six cards a sheet gives 95.3 × 84.7 mm flat, folding to a tent 95.3 mm wide and 42.3 mm tall, close to the traditional 3.5 by 2 inch place card. Card stock up to about 200 gsm feeds through most domestic printers. Above that, the rollers start to slip and jam, and a duplex unit jams sooner than a straight single-sided path because the paper has to turn back on itself.
Where does the hole go on a gift tag?
On the center line, 8 mm below the top edge, marked by a dashed 6 mm circle. Six millimeters is the hole a standard office punch cuts, and 8 mm from the edge leaves 5 mm of card between the hole and the edge, which is about the least that survives being pulled on by a ribbon. The circle marks where to punch. Tick the To and From rules if you would rather write the names on afterwards, and leave the name list empty to get a sheet of blank tags to keep in a drawer.
What happens to a long name?
It shrinks to fit the card and wraps to at most two lines, and a word is only broken in half when it is longer than the card at every size. Capitals printed under about 4 mm tall stop being legible from the far side of a dinner table, so the page warns you when a name has shrunk past that point. Fewer cards a sheet, or landscape, gives each name more room. Anything that cannot fit even at the smallest size is shortened with an ellipsis and reported.
Is anything uploaded or stored?
No. This page reads your guest list, lays it out as vector geometry in your browser, and prints it through your browser's own dialog. Nothing is sent anywhere, there is no account or watermark, and no settings are saved, so the list is gone when you close the tab.

Related tools