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What is better to write on a cake? "Happy Birthday <name>" or "Happy Birthday to <name>"?
Or are both of them equally fine? Or is there an alternative that's better than both?

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  • I think most cake decorators would recommend the exclusion of the preposition, but let's wait for them to weigh in.
    – Cascabel_StandWithUkraine_
    Commented Jan 28, 2019 at 18:33
  • Seriously? "Opinion-based"?! This is what's wrong with StackExchange...
    – aditsu
    Commented Jan 29, 2019 at 4:13

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By far, the most common phrasing is "Happy [Nth] Birthday [Name]". You can easily see this in an image search for "birthday cakes". For example:

cake line 1: happy birthday, cake line 2: any name here

(Likewise, no preposition is used for other types of cakes, such as "Congratulations [name]", "Happy Anniversary [name]".)

See also the examples here:

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  • I've also seen some examples that include "to", e.g. this, but you may be right that the other one is more common.
    – aditsu
    Commented Jan 28, 2019 at 19:49

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