DEAR MISS MANNERS: A former client of mine who was also the mother of a graduate school friend was on the first plane that hit the World Trade Center. So the obligation to anyone with any breeding is clear: You write as soon as possible and offer your condolences.

In this case, though, there were complicating factors: The daughter and I had had very little contact in the intervening 25 years, except for a few cordial e-mail exchanges. I didn't learn of the death until a month later. And while I know where my friend lives generically, the only contact information I had was her e-mail address -- at work.

Can you tell where this is going?

Is it now permissible to write a sympathy note by e-mail? Is one obligated to follow-up with a hand-written note? In my case, the logic of that was obviated by a subsequent back-and-forth by e-mail, amounting to a conversation, so I think a written note might have seemed odd rather than comforting.

Is it all right that I forwarded to my friend a fond e-mail about her mother (a sort of electronic eulogy) which I had sent to my own children? We need help. I fear that the situation will recur.

GENTLE READER: Let us hope not.

Nevertheless, the need to write letters of condolence will reoccur, even if peace prevails upon the earth, and Miss Manners is gratified that you recognize the obligation. We are only haggling over the form.

Your friend was evidently also gratified in spite of the form you used. It must have been awkward for her to receive a condolence message among her professional exchanges at work, and let us hope it did not overcome her there. And, of course, a handwritten letter would have been more gracious.

Miss Manners is aware of the marvelous contributions that the computer makes to correspondence. For example, you could have used it to track down your friend's address, directly or through your alumni association. E-mail is also a fine way to have a casual chat, as you did subsequently, but "I'm sorry about your mother's death" is not a casual, chatty statement.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Last night, some friends of my husband came over for dinner and a video. They brought a lot of fruit with them for us all to share as dessert. After dinner, I cut up some of the fruit and put it out on the coffee table for us all to share during the video.

As our friends were leaving, I spied some bags of fruit I did not cut up sitting on the counter. I offered some of the remainder of the fruit to our friends to take home with them. I thought that, while they brought it for all of us, it was really a lot of fruit, and our friends might enjoy it the next day.

After they left, my husband told me that he thought that it was rude of me to return some of the fruit to our guests; that our guests bought it for us and I just returned a gift. I thought that if we kept the fruit, we would be hoarding. I wonder if Miss Manners can clear this up. Is it rude to return something like this to guests as they leave? Or, is it rude (as I thought) to keep the overflow of our guests' generosity? I suppose this is similar to someone coming over to one's house with five bottles of wine, when everyone can really only drink two bottles.

GENTLE READER: It's not whether you keep the goods (although Miss Manners has heard equally indignant reactions from donors who were not offered their leftovers and those who were) but how you do it. Contributions to cooperative meals are not presents but should be acknowledged gratefully nevertheless. "Here's your bag of fruit," sounds as if you want to make sure your guests have no excuse for returning. "The fruit was delicious, but we can't possibly eat all that's left" would give them the opportunity to accept it back or insist that you try.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am traveling on an airline. I could gripe over having to pay $5 to rent a headset, which used to come free in the old days, but I don't.

What does bother me is, at some seemingly arbitrary time, over an hour before landing, the head flight attendant announces, "This concludes the entertainment portion of this flight. Please have your headsets ready as the attendants come down the aisle to collect them."

Do the attendants really need all this time to get the headsets ready for the next flight? Or is this a token gesture of anti-hospitality to remind us that we didn't pay for a first-class ticket and could be enjoying music for the whole flight?

Nobody likes a party host who attempts to curtail the party when the night is still young, and politely, but firmly, sends everyone out the door. I thought it was proper for a travel host to give all guests the best service they paid for, rather than reminding them of what services they didn't pay for.

GENTLE READER: As Miss Manners has rarely seen flight attendants lolling around with time on their hands, she presumes there is a reason that this task is done well before whatever it takes to prepare for the landing.

You are on an airplane, so why don't you ask? (Hint: A polite inquiry is one that does not already contain a pejorative answer.)

But you came to the right place to discuss the class aspect of your question. Of course, you resent the idea of citizens being divided into different classes and being given different treatment. All good Americans do.

Selling extra services, including a smaller ratio of flight attendants to customers, strikes her as reasonable. But she finds it outrageous that the comforts once basic to all levels of service, such as seats large enough to sit in, now go for extra. And she is astonished that some commercial establishments, notably expensive restaurants and nightclubs, are able to attract customers when they blatantly dispense better service to customers who pay the same amount.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: How do you get people to stop poking and grabbing when they talk to you?

I am thinking of three people in particular. Two of them I see fairly regularly, and the third is on the board of an organization on which I also serve. I like all three of these individuals, but they can't seem to carry on a conversation without constantly grabbing my arms or putting a hand on my shoulder, and it drives me nuts. Is there a way to put an end to this, or am I being too "touchy?" (Pun intended.)

GENTLE READER: People are supposed to poke you when you make bad puns. Otherwise, they are in danger of being poked by you, while you say, "Get it?"

Puns aside, the method Miss Manners recommends is pulling back with an apparently involuntary exclamation and then apologizing with, "Oh, I'm so sorry, but you startled me." This does the job by startling them.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it ever considered appropriate or acceptable practice to leave the voice of a deceased person on a telephone answering machine -- especially for three years after the date of death?

I can accept the fact that this person is no longer living, and I feel the answering machine should be replaced with a new answering machine with the voice of the surviving spouse. The voice of the deceased and the answering machine could be stored somewhere if it is important that this voice message be saved. I am interested in learning your opinion about this.

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners is interested in learning something herself. She would like to know what relation you were to the deceased.

Can you not bear to hear that person's voice because it gives you a moment of false hope and then tears you apart when you remember that you will never again hear that voice live? In that case, you could gently plead with your mother, or whoever it is, to change the message for your sake.

Or is it your object to give etiquette a bad name by using it to poison the harmless little comforts of the bereaved?

If so, you are not alone. Grief (in others) inspires a great many souls to deliver etiquette pronouncements that are as unfounded as they are unrequested and unkind. There is a whole division of them devoted to telling widows who have been using their husbands' full names (as in "Mrs. Humphrey Hillwood") that etiquette now requires them to be "Mrs. Harriet Hillwood." Etiquette requires no such thing.

Nor does it require people to expunge the recorded voices of the dead. Miss Manners can assure you that the strictest rules of Victorian mourning etiquette had nothing whatsoever to say about answering machines.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I was rather stunned to receive this note written in a holiday card from an old high school chum: "I wish we were closer so I could tease you and know you would take it in the right spirit, but I'll try anyway. I love your art, but the laws of holiday cards say you can't send the same card two years in a row. Wishing you the best always!"

As a professional artist, I enjoy going to the effort (and expense) involved in designing a new holiday card every year, so it is highly unlikely that I am guilty of the suggested offense. Furthermore, I wrote and sent the cards from my home, confident that any leftover previous years' cards were safely stored in a cabinet in my studio across town.

On the chance that I did commit a transgression, however, I immediately sent "chum" a "this year's card" with a polite note telling her that this was the card she was supposed to have received, and that if I did in fact send her the same card two years in a row, she was entitled to tease me mercilessly. I'd appreciate your thoughts on this matter.

GENTLE READER: The only point on which you and your chum seem to disagree is whether you actually did sent her the same card this year as last. Miss Manners hasn't the least idea.

Her thoughts on this matter are therefore straying to questions of her own. Why, she wonders, do you both believe that annual novelty is strictly required for what is, however attractive, merely the paper on which to send holiday greetings? And why is your friend trying to pass off chastising you as wishing you the best?

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