DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have noticed that in formal or semiformal table settings, the dessert fork is placed above the plate and parallel with the table edge. But it is always placed with the handle to the left. Why is this custom so universally followed? Most of my dessert-eating friends are not left handed.

GENTLE READER: So? Their fish, meat and salad forks appear to the left of their plates, and Miss Manners observes that they manage to get hold of those quickly enough.

Anyway, dessert -- either because it has an inherently sweet nature or because it appears when people are too bloated to fuss -- is eager to please everyone. While it is true that the dessert fork placed above the plate properly keeps its handle to the left, there should also be a dessert spoon, placed above the fork, with its handle toward the right. Dessert is truly an equal opportunity course.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My wife and I, now in our 60s and retired, have a good income, and everything is paid for. Over the years, we had many friends and entertained graciously, but now so many of our peers have died or retired and moved to warmer-climate communities.

We are overloaded with dishes, candelabra, silverware, serving dishes and industrial-size cookware. Sometimes I feel we had a restaurant in our home. I want to thin out some of these things. They take up room and space and are rarely used these days.

My wife won't get rid of anything. She is living in the past century and won't accept the fact that things are not going to be repeated, and our old friends are not going to come back, and those grand olde dinners are a thing of the past.

Do you think I am being unreasonable in wanting to have some of this stuff sold off, as we are very unlikely to use it for entertainment again? We are getting old, and I want less things around the house rather than having every nook and cranny, shelf and drawer filled with items that were used for entertaining.

We have fond memories and photographs, and I say that is enough. The equipment used for cooking and entertaining should be passed on to somebody younger who will get good use from them and go through the happy times we have had in the past.

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners is torn between siding with your wife and requesting a preview of the estate sale. After a fierce struggle, the unselfish side triumphed, and she would like to offer some testimony on behalf of your wife, along with a suggested compromise.

This is not to suggest that there is any right or wrong position in the subjective struggle between sentiment and clutter. She only wants to point out that the resources for entertaining are not just practical but, even unused, symbolic of a gracious way of living that your wife does not want to abandon.

Miss Manners' compromise is to keep just enough of your best china and silver and such for you and your wife to use every day, along with a few extras as replacements and for the apparently few guests you may still see. That way, your wife will not be forced to feel that narrowing your circle also means lowering your standards.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: My fiance and I are quarreling over a point of sports etiquette.

Suppose that you support the away team at a sporting event. Is it polite to vocalize your support?

He claims that it is rude to cheer for your own team. I claim that it is perfectly acceptable to cheer for your own team but not to boo the home team.

I have never known him to stay quiet at a sporting event when he supports the away team, but he says that he realizes that he is being rude and expects the home fans to be rude in return if he is too loud in his support.

GENTLE READER: This is not the crowd from the Sunday afternoon symphony series, you know.

Participation of a robust, informed and opinionated audience is part of the event. They are not supposed to sit there frozen, withholding their critical judgment and then issue polite applause in order to thank the professionals for allowing them to observe them doing their job. Everyone should be allowed to express the acceptable level of approval or disapproval, regardless of whether other members of the audience concur in that judgment.

But although there is no etiquette violation involved here, Miss Manners fears there may be a safety issue. These events tend to attract rough crowds, and what is not improper may, unfortunately, still be imprudent.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: At the very end of a recent full-length ballet performance, I stood up for an ovation when the curtain opened and the two principal dancers appeared onstage for their bows. After a couple of seconds, I was tapped on the shoulder with a comment that I was blocking the view of a couple of people in the rows behind me.

Given that I was seated in the middle of a row and was unable to move to either aisle without inconveniencing or blocking other peoples' views, I continued to stand and give an ovation to the various dancers who came out for their bows in appreciating of their phenomenal performance.

GENTLE READER: See above. Now, this is a really rough crowd.

Feeling incorrect? Address your etiquette questions (in black or blue-black ink on white writing paper) to Miss Manners, in care of this newspaper. The quill shortage prevents Miss Manners from answering questions except through this column.

Copyright 2002 by Judith Martin

Distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

END MISS MANNERS 8-13-02

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All of a sudden, people are asking Miss Manners how to act socially toward those who are in the throes of a public scandal. What should one do if one happens to encounter an acquaintance, or, horrors, a friend, or a friend of a friend, who, ah, appears to have done something unsavory?

This is an unprecedented etiquette problem because up until now, polite society followed such a strict standard of morality that the problem did not arise. It has been a terrible shock.

Some people are so shocked that they yearn to have the old standards back, if only they could figure out how those worked. Fortunately, Miss Manners happens to remember.

In the old, old days, we dealt with the unspeakable by not speaking about it. Therefore, there was no reason to deal with it. This was, one has to admit, an elegant solution.

True, it left a great many scoundrels loose in society, and attached unpleasant aspersions, instead, to their victims and to anyone who tried to expose them. On the beneficial side, it cut down the amount of gossip, or rather enhanced its value by making it harder to come by. More importantly, it maintained the reputation of society, which, to this day, is believed to have been, at that time, hopelessly tame.

In the last few decades, this method was rejected as unworthy of an advanced civilization. Modern methods of processing gossip have created a fast and vast distribution system that made the whispering method seem cowardly.

But when scoundrels began broadcasting their own transgressions, they became too commonplace to be interesting. To make matters worse, the bad reputation accrued to society itself for harboring so many of them.

That was solved by redefining moral standards to conform with what appeared to be majority behavior. If the standard is low enough, nearly everyone can meet it, and by definition, society's standards are being upheld. Another elegant solution. To maintain the requisite minority of scoundrels, a refusal to discuss one's sins became the worst sin.

Whether society thins out its ranks of rascals to an acceptable level by ignoring or redefining violations, there remains the problem of dealing with those who are caught by the legal system. (Miss Manners need hardly remind honorable people that we hold the accused to be innocent until proven guilty, however convenient we might find it to be frightfully busy while the outcome is in doubt.)

Here is the vocabulary of reactions, depending on the amount of disapproval, the degree of acquaintanceship and the circumstances of the encounter:

Stranger or acquaintance known to be a moral monster, encountered on neutral grounds: the cut direct, as if the person did not exist (although one is not likely to whip the head up and wheel around when heading toward something that does not exist).

Stranger: unsmiling nod if introduced, hands behind back so as to avoid a handshake.

Acquaintance under social circumstances: Avoidance if at all possible, otherwise stiff minimal civility.

Friend who did something monstrous: "I'm sure it's more complicated than it has been made to appear," put as a statement, not a question.

Friend who has done something awful, but not so morally repugnant as to be qualified for monster-hood: "What can I do to get you the help you need?"

Intimate friend with similar lapse: "Whatever mistakes you made, I want you to know that I believe in you."

Now, here's the hard part:

It is the pathetically errant friend whom you invite to dinner in the middle of his troubles, not the celebrity monster of the hour, who has piqued everyone's interest.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it proper to wear a black dress to a 2 p.m. black-tie preferred wedding/reception?

GENTLE READER: It is not proper for a black-tie preferred wedding reception even to exist. Black tie means evening clothes. The last Miss Manners checked, 2 p.m. occurred in the afternoon. And as hosts only state dress codes they prefer, the instruction is also redundant.

It is also improper, by standards commonly violated just as flagrantly, to wear a black dress to a wedding. Perhaps you are wondering, therefore, if your hosts' ignorance or defiance of the conventions of dress would justify -- or disguise -- your own.

Miss Manners is afraid not. If that were the case, the ignorant and defiant would be in charge of setting the standards.

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