Whamming someone smaller than oneself in order to teach that person civilized behavior is not within Miss Manners' concept of propriety, much less logic.

The dinner table is the center for the teaching and practicing not just of table manners but of conversation, consideration, tolerance, family feeling, and just about all the other accomplishments of polite society except the minuet.

It is not rude to turn off your telephone by switching it on to an answering machine, which is cheaper and less disruptive than ripping it out of the wall. Those who are offended because they cannot always get through when they seek, at their own convenience, to barge in on people are suffering from a rude expectation.

A small wedding is not necessarily one to which very few people are invited. It is one to which the person you are addressing is not invited.

If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.

The one prediction that never comes true is, 'You'll thank me for telling you this.

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