You are here: Home / etiquette do it right. I appreciate this. I really do. But it’s not right. In no particular order, here are the things which strike me as being off (without checking Emily or Amy): This is just my opinion, but I would dispense with the dessert utensils and the coffee cup. The whole setting is too cluttered.
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From February 2019. This month’s Crappy Old Book of the Month was Miss Manners’® Guide to Rearing Perfect Children: A Primer for Everyone Worried about the Future of Civilization (Judith Martin, Atheneum, New York 1984). Unfortunately, this month slipped away from me and I only posted two measly posts about this delightful– and truly funny–book.
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I was apparently looking at Judith Martin, Miss Manners’ Guide to Rearing Perfect Children: A Primer for Everyone Worried about the Future of Civilization, Atheneum, New York, 1984 four years ago. It’s a pretty funny book. It features the shenanigans of two families, the Right family and the Awful family. From February 2019– Dear Miss Manners: “My
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From February 2019. I laughed. Dear Miss Manners: “All of my friends are going away for the holidays. I won’t have anyone to play with or invite over. This happens every time we have a vacation, and lots of times on weekends. Everybody goes to visit his father in nice places, and I have to
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“If the nurse brings… .” Whoa boy. Lilian Eichler, Book of Etiquette (1923)
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If your plans include a Garden Party, you’ll need to get up to speed on the proper invitation. We do not have a tennis court here on the Farm.
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Lilian Eichler, Book of Etiquette (1923) For perspective, Wodehouse’s Leave it to Psmith was published in 1923.
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“A dinner invitation is the highest form of courtesy. That is why it requires prompt and very courteous acknowledgment. “Ordinarily dinner invitations are issued ten days ahead, unless it is a very large formal affair, when two full weeks are allowed. It is not good form to send an invitation just about a day or
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“When a young man has been asked to call by a young lady, he does not ask to see her alone but requests of the servant at the door that he be announced to the ladies. This is especially important, for it infers that he expects to be presented to the young lady’s mother or her
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New York, N.Y.,April 4, 19— Dear Travers: The bearer of this note, Mr. Robert Duncan, of Chicago, plans to be in your town for two months. Besides being a personal friend of mine, he is the advertising manager of the Goodfield Company in Los Angeles, and knowing as I do how interested you are in
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This is just precious. And do scroll to the end. Worth it. INTRODUCING CHILDREN It is important for children to be taught early the significance and value of formal introductions. But parents must carefully avoid all suggestion of snobbishness in their young sons and daughters. There is an amusing story related of a certain little
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A great many people have the mistaken impression that an introduction is meant solely to make two people known to each other for the short time that they are in company together. The correct introduction helps to create friendship—the kind of friendship that lasts. It is not enough to exchange names. It is not enough
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THE MOST USUAL METHOD “Perhaps the best way to announce an engagement is for the young lady and her mother to send small engraved cards to their circle of friends and relatives, making the announcement in a simple statement, and mentioning an afternoon when they will be “at home” to visitors. The young man may
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The man or woman who is truly cultured, truly well-bred, tries to make everyone happy and at ease. It is only the exceedingly vulgar person who finds pleasure in hurting the feelings of the people with whom he comes into contact. It makes no difference how wealthy or how poor a person is, how ignorant
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I have in mind to start a new little daily project. Should be fun. Here goes. The perfect gentleman is not the dude, the over-dressed “dandy” who disdains the workingman in his patched clothes and who sniffs contemptuously at the word “work.” The true gentleman is kindly, courageous, civil. He is kind to everyone—to the
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A telephone switchboard and switchboard operator Nothing in particular. Just something that came up in conversation. Photos of the book must have been taken in 2013 before I learned how to auto-correct white balance in GIMP.
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And yes, I am putting away the last box of books brought down from The Apartment.
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This month’s Crappy Old Book of the Month was Miss Manners’® Guide to Rearing Perfect Children: A Primer for Everyone Worried about the Future of Civilization (Judith Martin, Atheneum, New York 1984). Unfortunately, this month slipped away from me and I only posted two measly posts about this delightful– and truly funny–book. I am a
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Dear Miss Manners: “My children are always saying such dreadful things to each other– derogatory personal remarks that I consider downright rude. They, and sometimes my wife, call them “just teasing.” What would you consider the polite side of teasing, and where, even in a family is it just nastiness? Gentle Reader: “Insulting is such
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Dear Miss Manners: “All of my friends are going away for the holidays. I won’t have anyone to play with or invite over. This happens every time we have a vacation, and lots of times on weekends. Everybody goes to visit his father in nice places, and I have to stay home because my parents
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