Dear Miss Manners: Where do you place your mouth and lips in relation to a soupspoon? Do you sip from the side or the tip of the spoon?
A friend and I have a difference of opinion. I say you sip soup from the side, but if it's a thick type of soup with lots of items in it (such as pieces of vegetables), you place the tip of the spoon in your mouth so you can consume the liquid and whatever else at the same time.Gentle Reader: Yours would be an excellent solution if the transportation of food to mouth were merely an engineering problem, to be figured out on a practical basis. But if that were the case, Miss Manners would also have to listen to more radical engineers, who might point out that picking things out of the soup with the fingers would be even more practical, provided that the soup isn't scalding.
In all societies, table manners are ritualistic, as well as utilitarian, which means that they do not always embody the most efficient way of getting food to the mouth. Miss Manners trusts you would not travel around the world offending people of other cultures by ignoring their eating customs.
And perhaps she ought to stop offending you by treating a simple and reasonable question as if it were an anthropological thesis. The answer is that one always pours soup, even goody-laden soup, into the mouth from the side of an oval soupspoon. Perhaps she can make up for her pedantry by telling you about the gumbo spoon. It is large, it is proper for soups with a lot of things in them, and best of all, it is round.
Dear Miss Manners: My daughter has been living with a man for some four years and there is no prognosis for marriage, now or in the future. They are both well-educated and work but claim they cannot afford to get married.
Whenever we give my daughter a gift for their home, do we have to include him on the gift card? I do not wish to hurt my daughter, but I don't feel he should necessarily share in our gift of a waffle iron, mixer, coffee maker, etc.
Gentle Reader: Even if your daughter were married, you could still give her alone whatever presents you wish, for her birthday, Christmas or just because you feel like it. Other than for joint occasions, such as anniversaries (Miss Manners assumes your presents are not intended to celebrate each year of her moving in with the gentleman in question), individual presents may be offered without insulting others in the household.
As they do not seem to be entering into a permanent commitment, the time may come when your daughter is glad to be able to identify household goods as being hers alone.
Dear Miss Manners: After I sent a gift check to a newlywed couple, paid to the order of Mr. and Mrs. , I was informed by the mother of the bride that I need to get with the '90s. Brides do not take the name of their husbands any more, she said. Furthermore, I was told that I shouldn't have assumed that the couple has a joint bank account.
I am only 49 years old, and I can't believe that I'm so very much behind the times.
Is Mr. and Mrs. truly an archaic form of address? Is it proper etiquette to address young couples separately unless otherwise informed? If so, how does one address an envelope, and how does one decide on the payee of a gift check?
Gentle Reader: What is highly improper, and always will be, is for the recipients of presents, or their relatives, to insult the donors. So Miss Manners suggests you quit worrying about not following the etiquette of your appalling friends.
One addresses a married couple as they have indicated they wish to be addressed, if one happens to know this. But what ought to be a standard form, free of traps for the unwary, has become highly idiosyncratic, so it behooves everyone to accept inadvertent errors graciously.
If the bride does not change her name, this means two lines on the envelope - Ms. Mary Ellen Snip-pet/Mr. Calvin Carper. (A check may have both names, but titles are not used.)
However, Miss Manners is worried that to send these people any present is premature. If a newly married couple cannot figure out how to share their own wedding presents, there cannot be much hope for the marriage.
In a dilemma about giving or receiving presents? Help is available in Miss Manners Present-Giving pamphlet. Send $2, plus a long self-addressed stamped envelope, to Miss Manners, in care of the Deseret News, P.O. BOX 4465, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163-4465.
Feeling incorrect? Address your etiquette questions (in black or blue-black ink on white writing paper) to Miss Manners, in care of the Deseret News, P.O. Box 1257, Salt Lake City, UT 84110. The quill shortage prevents Miss Manners from answering questions except through this column.