Quotes from Judith Martin

You glance at an e-mail. You give more attention to a real letter.

We're now seeing email that people thought they had deleted showing up as evidence in court. You can't erase email. As that becomes more commonly realized, people will be a little wiser about what they type.

Learn graceful ways of saying no and of pointing out that this pressure to do something is not in line with most people's wishes.

The greater the controversy, the more you need manners.

Etiquette is all human social behavior. If you're a hermit on a mountain, you don't have to worry about etiquette; if somebody comes up the mountain, then you've got a problem. It matters because we want to live in reasonably harmonious communities.

When you consider how epidemic boredom is in our time, you have to concede that entertaining is a healing art.

Email is very informal, a memo. But I find that not signing off or not having a salutation bothers me.

If you can't be kind, at least be vague.

Many people mistakenly think a new technology cancels out an old one.

A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful.

Chaperons don't enforce morality; they force immorality to be discreet.

The invention of the teenager was a mistake. Once you identify a period of life in which people get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes - naturally, no one wants to live any other way.

Parents should conduct their arguments in quiet, respectful tones, but in a foreign language. You'd be surprised what an inducement that is to the education of children.

She only maintains that it is possible, under some circumstances, for a lady to murder her husband; but that a woman who wears ankle-strap shoes and smokes on the street corner, though she may be a joy to all who know her and have devoted her life to charity, could never qualify as a lady.

Conversation consists of developing and playing with ideas by juxtaposing the accumulated conclusions of two or more people and then improvising on them. It requires supplying such ingredients as information, experience, anecdotes, and opinions, but then being prepared to have them challenged and to contribute to a new mixture. Conversation

The President of the United States is addressed by nickname (his or his enemies') before the election and "Mr. President" after taking office. Everybody else in Washington is styled "The Honorable" to make up for what everybody outside of Washington calls them.

As dear Erasmus said in De Civilitate, "It is safe to admit nothing that might embarrass one if repeated." Gossip

Miss Manners' meager arsenal consists only of the withering look, the insistent and repeated request, the cold voice, the report up the chain of command and the tilted nose. They generally work.

One can become quite proficient at this amiable patter; the trick is to omit the instructive parts when attending formal dinner parties outside the house. It would be a mistake for Miss Manners to provide you with a list of no-no's. It may never have occurred to your children to laugh with a mouthful of soup, for instance, or to discharge unappreciated salad ingredients into the napkin. Here, instead, are a few yes-yes's: Small

However, if you accept the actual invitation, no other appointment—unless with a surgeon or an undertaker—can take precedence.

Making Others Feel Comfortable. Miss

As if etiquette weren't magnificently capable of being used to make others feel uncomfortable. All right. Miss Manners will give you an example, although you are spoiling her Queen Victoria mood: If you are rude to your ex-husband's new wife at your daughter's wedding, you will make her feel smug. Comfortable. If you are charming and polite, you will make her feel uncomfortable. Which do you want to do? On

Miss Manners hereby absolves everyone from feeling any embarrassment deliberately imposed by others.

It is a general rule to err on the side of formality rather than of intimacy.