Respond to messages in medium you received them
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.
Dear Miss Manners:
My granddaughter invited two cousins and their families to her wedding. Both of their responses were to return the RSVP with the “Regret” portion ticked. There was no other communication such as a note or phone call to explain why they could not attend. My granddaughter is an only child, and these cousins are two of her closest relatives.
Am I correct in assuming that they owed her some reason for not being at her wedding? As recipients of the invitation, should they send a wedding present?
Gentle Reader:
No, they do not owe a reason, and they do not owe a present. What they owe, in all decency, is an expression of regret at not being able to attend, along with their good wishes.
But Miss Manners notices that the invitation itself invited that curt response by providing a place to decline with a mere check. Apparently it already expressed regret, which is an odd thing for the host to presuppose.
Dear Miss Manners:
We often meet friends at restaurants. If one party arrives ahead of the other, should they go to the table or wait for the other party to arrive so they can all be seated at the same time?
I would like to wait for them, but one couple always seems to arrive before us and they go to the table without us, even if I have made the reservation. Should I care, or not?
Gentle Reader:
Not. Restaurant rules differ from dinner parties at one’s home. At the latter, guests wait to be seated until their hosts indicate that it is time to do so, and are seated themselves.
Miss Manners is surprised, however, that the situation you described has been an issue at restaurants, as most do not even allow only part of the party to be seated for fear of losing a bigger table if the others do not show. If your friends are able to get hold of a table, why not let them? If it helps, you may consider that the host in this case is the restaurant itself. And securing a table is infinitely preferable to being jostled in a crowded hallway.