Why can’t I correct the idiots around me?
Degradation of the English language has become a prickly burr under my tail. While speaking with someone, if they say 6 times 5 equals 35, it is not considered impolite to correct them and say no, it’s 30. So why is it considered impolite to correct someone’s grammar?
Even in the halcyon days when we naively thought that facts were immutable and universal, there were problems with your premise. Miss Manners has no trouble imagining rude ways to correct a person’s multiplication.
As she is in the business of making the world more polite, not less, she will limit herself to one general example: delivering said correction in a way that belittles or embarrasses the recipient. It is to avoid such a result that etiquette has rules against correcting others. And of course, there are exceptions — responding to a request,
JUDITH MARTIN
teaching, saving someone from a worse fate (like underpaying the dinner bill) — many of which still require careful handling.
We are throwing a small baby shower for my niece and would like to put a small note in the invitations requesting that everyone be aware and please make sure they have not been exposed to COVID-19. Any suggestions how to word this? Obviously in a polite way!
Guests who have been careful during the pandemic will be offended at the suggestion that they were not. Guests who have not been careful during the pandemic will be offended that you think they should have been. And no one will change their behavior.
Go over the list again with your niece, and eliminate anyone about whom either of you has doubts.
I attended my daughter’s grade school program, an annual event that was reimagined in light of the COVID-ERA restrictions.
After the program, I sent an email to her teachers expressing my gratitude and complimenting them on a job well done. I copied the principal and the headmaster of the school.
I did not receive an email in return. When someone takes the time to send you an email of praise and thanks, is it necessary to respond?
Ordinarily, thank-you letters do not require a response for the practical reason that even Miss Manners cannot spend all day writing thankyou letters for thank-you letters for thank-you letters. 1 Each
6 Den
11 Rodeo rope 13 Dreadful 14 New York
cagers 15 Chemical
compounds 16 Strive for 17 Stroke
19 — down
roots 20 Drained of
color 22 Fictional
orphan 26 Pussyfoots 30 Not over 31 Looks happy 33 Place for
shadow 35 Gloomy 36 Slumbering 38 Untrusting 39 Damp 41 Apprehend a
suspect 44 Corporate
exec
45 Con 49 Spanish
dance 51 Stay
53 King Arthur’s
island 54 Marbles 55 Caribbean
nation 56 Scrooge’s
visitor 1 Antlered
animals 2 Barn topper 3 Pennsylvania
port
4 Ilsa’s love 5 Idle chatter 6 Beantown
team
7 Game show
prize 8 Pakistan’s
language 9 Low-cal 10 Fabric meas. 12 Recipe amts. 13 Suite
providers 18 Codgers’
queries 20 More open 21 Quickly 22 Tone 23 New Age
singer 24 Dangerous
March date 25 Wooded
hollow 27 World’s
longest river 28 “Fish Magic”
artist
29 Char 32 Pilot’s milieu 34 Church
official 37 Cobbler 40 Ibsen
woman 41 Astronomer’s
sighting 42 Tien Shan
mountains 43 Wallop 45 Far East
nanny 46 Peacekeeping org. 47 Binds 48 Scholarly
org.
49 “—,
humbug!” 50 French
monarch 52 It may be
hard-boiled