Criticize enough cards, and you may not get any

Dear Miss Manners: My neighbor insists that when mailing a card, it should be placed with the front facing the front of the envelope. Whenever she receives cards during the holidays or on her birthday, the first thing she does is to comment on whether it was “correctly positioned” or not.

I know of no such picayune dictates and feel that my neighbor is being petty. Will Miss Manners please clarify this notso-pressing issue?

Gentle Reader: The mystery is why people who rudely criticize others’ manners are so often ignorant of the rules. Unsolicited instruction is not a picayune matter, because it taints etiquette by representing it as rudeness.

Aside from the greater transgression of belittling people in the act of wishing her well, your neighbor is just wrong. Because envelopes are opened from the back, where the flap is, the contents should face that way.

Dear Miss Manners: How should I react to a friend who sent an email asking for the business of selling my father’s house — just one month after his passing? The email asked nothing about how I am, though she did bring us flowers two weeks ago.

Gentle Reader: So your friend did express sympathy. Miss Manners trusts that you have already thanked her for that. Yes? Because that is the only reaction you owe her.

Nowadays, emails announcing “Someone wants to buy your house” are sent indiscriminately. That your sympathetic friend misjudged when you will be emotionally ready does not seem as intrusive.

Send questions to Miss Manners’ website: www.missmanners.com; to her email address: dearmiss manners@gmail.com; or through postal mail: Miss Manners, Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.