While jewelry shopping you will likely come across many different abbreviations and initials. It is important to walk into a brick and mortar store or surf an online venue with as much knowledge as possible. The more you know, the more you can make informed decisions when buying.
For jewelry pieces set with diamonds, TW (total weight) or DTW (diamond total weight) or CTW (carat total weight) are abbreviations used to tell you how much diamond weight is in that piece, when adding up all of the smaller stones. Know that TW is never referring to a single stone. It is always referring to the total carat weight of multiple stones. Let’s say for example that you are in the market for an eternity band. If the tag says “.85 tw” it means that if you were to add up the weight of all the stones set in the ring it would equal .85 carats.
While the eternity band example is fairly basic, the tags on pieces with different shape stones can become more complicated. Different vendors and jewelry store will have their own tagging systems. Best practice is to always ask the salesperson to break it down and explain the tag in layman’s terms. Understanding how they tag their items will help you to compare pieces more accurately.
