Respond in-kind to message format

Dear Miss Manners: With the advent of so many ways to communicate, I am sometimes at a loss to know how to avoid misunderstandings and missed messages attributable to using the wrong medium.

Some of my friends and acquaintances prefer telephones to email, while others prefer text messages. Some prefer landlines to mobile phones, etc., ad infinitum. Is there a rule, or at least an expectation, that one should reply to a message in the same medium in which it was proffered?

Gentle Reader: It is getting so that one has to keep dossiers on one’s friends: what do they refuse to eat, what forms of address (honorifics, surnames) do they find insulting, and now, what forms of communication do they refuse to use.

So yes, it would help to notice the means in which messages are sent, and to respond in kind. Miss Manners realizes that acceding to that preference deprives the flexible person of choice. But, then, those who will not speak by telephone and those who do not communicate by keyboard are not going to have a future together, anyway. Dear Miss Manners: Is it appropriate to bring my girlfriend to a firsttime family reunion?

Gentle Reader: Only if you will find it appropriate for every single member of your family to ask her when you are getting married.

Dear Miss Manners: I am lucky enough to be living in a coastal area with abundant seafood. Mussels are inexpensive and fun to cook with, plus they show up on the menu of several local restaurants.

But how does one eat mussels in the shell — in, say, a soup or sauce-laden dish — without making a mess of it?

Gentle Reader: Mussels are considerate little creatures, in that they provide you with a tool with which to enjoy them.

That is, Miss Manners has never seen one actually hand over a seafood fork, which is what you would use to pry them from their shells. But after that, they provide the spoon-shaped shell with which you can properly enjoy the sauce.