You start with the cutlery that are farthest from the plates away. Forks may be on the left, knives and spoons on the right. The sharp side of the knives point toward the plate. Place the forks next to each other like roof tiles. This creates a kind of roof/step. Do you have a spoon needed? Then place it right next to the knives.
Dessert cutlery
Dessert cutlery may be placed above the plate be placed. In doing so, the lepel to links and the vork to rright.
Handy mnemonic device: the spoon points left, the voRk points right. If you have both a spoon and fork, the dessert spoon is at the top.