If you ‘invite’ people to celebration dinner, you have to pay

Dear Miss Manners: I have been slowly slogging through grad school one course a semester, and after four long years, I’m finally going to graduate.

I work in the industry I’m going to school for, and I’d like to invite some of my co-workers out to dinner to celebrate. While I’d love to foot the bill for everyone, I’m not financially able to do so.

How can I tactfully word the invitation so everyone knows I’m inviting them to dinner, not treating them to one? I don’t want anyone to be embarrassed due to assumptions or expectations.

Gentle Reader: Here is a lesson about the real world: If you cannot afford to do something, you cannot do it.

It is true that getting others to pay your bills has become a national sport, whether it is through gift registries, with fundraising drives or by charging people you claim to entertain. The ruse of “come and honor me at your expense” is a common ploy.

Miss Manners will not help you do that. Why didn’t you ask, instead, how you could entertain your colleagues inexpensively?

Perhaps you could treat them all to a toast in the office cafeteria, or in a bar after work. Or invite them to a weekend tea party.

Or you could just bubble over about how happy you are to be graduating and to have a great job working with people you admire. Then perhaps someone might think of toasting you.

Dear Miss Manners: Over the last few years, I have been introducing recently bereaved female relatives and friends as “the widow X.” I was surprised to learn that this offends some people, so I thought I might vary the introduction with an occasional “the relict X.”

Which term do you think most women would prefer? In the case of a bereaved male, would the term “relicter” be appropriate? Thanks for any guidance you can offer.

Gentle Reader: Some guidance: Please stop annoying the bereaved by showing off your familiarity with defunct terms that identify them as leftovers.

Dear Miss Manners: Is there any way to politely back out of an invitation one has already accepted? I know this is done all too frequently for any reason, but there are some situations where something more important truly does come up. Is there a mannerly way to handle this?

Gentle Reader: Disease and death are excuses that any host should recognize as valid for canceling an invitation. “Something more important” is not.