One method suffices for family invitations

Dear Miss Manners: Our home is the gathering place for all celebrations on my husband’s side of the family. Whenever we issue an invitation, we have four of his siblings to contact as well as various adult nieces and nephews and his elderly father and aunt.

Each of these people seems to require a different method of communication. Some text, some email, some require phone calls, and one only responds to invitations on Facebook.

It’s way too complicated to issue a casual potluck invite and to keep track of who responds to what, so I use email only. Everyone (but the elderly whom we call in respect to their needs) has email, but some don’t care to check it more than every couple of weeks. If they miss out on our gatherings or general family news, I maintain I’m not at fault. But then I seem to get blamed when they do. What do you say?

Gentle Reader: That you need not accept blame for unopened emails. Miss Manners recommends that instead you try sending them all hand-written invitations. Your family will like it even less — but you will have satisfied the otherwise sarcastic question, “Did you need a handwritten invitation?”

Dear Miss Manners: A proposal went out to the club’s board members via email asking for suggestions. I was the very first to answer. Not 30 minutes later, one of the members answered with the same suggestions, tweaking the words around a bit but basically making the exact same suggestions.

No one seemed to notice; in fact, their email responses said, “Great ideas” to Janice first, and then to me. She does this frequently, and I’m finding it irritating, at best. How can I call her out without looking petty?

Gentle Reader: “I am so glad that Janice agrees about this.” The best antidote to someone else’s pettiness, Miss Manners maintains, is resisting it oneself.