DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am saddened by the loss of a friend who passed away as a result of an auto accident just a day before she would have participated in her graduation ceremony. The whole community she grew up in is devastated.

I knew her from her basketball games and would often talk to her mother at the games. Her mother and father were very close to her. Her family was looking forward to her future. She received her basketball scholarship the day of the accident.

I want to pay my respects at the funeral home. I will be going by myself so I will be very nervous about the proper way to handle things. I want to send a card and flowers.

I purchased a sympathy card for the family. Should it be addressed to the parents or the deceased? I assume it should be addressed to the deceased. Please correct me if I am wrong. I have never had to handle anything like this before.

I have no idea what to say to the family. This is very painful for them because they were close to their daughter. I've been in agony ever since I heard the news myself.

What is the proper way to express your concern and sorrow without upsetting them further? I sometimes get lightheaded around caskets. This occasion WILL make me lightheaded. Do you have any suggestions for either preventing the situation or excusing myself if I feel it coming on?

GENTLE READER: This is always a daunting situation, even for those who have had to go through it before, and Miss Manners admires you for facing it. Many an adult takes the cruel and cowardly course of running away.

The only thing that could upset the parents more than they already are is the impression that others don't care. But you have nobly determined to use all the ways to show that you do, and Miss Manners need only guide you through the technicalities.

The flowers should be sent to the funeral home, addressed to "The funeral of" with your friend's name. Condolences are addressed to the bereaved, in this case the parents, but a letter is infinitely preferable to a card, where you merely sign someone else's words.

This brings us to the question of what to say. Both in person and by letter, what you need to tell the parents is that you sympathize with them and cared for their daughter. The former is done just by saying "I'm so sorry," and by writing, "I send you my deepest sympathy." Elaborating on this is what gets people saying foolish, hurtful things, such as "I know how you feel" or "Time will heal you."

If there is an open casket, you may be able to busy yourself with the mourners so that it is not conspicuous that you keep your distance. But if you do get faint, you need only say so to anyone nearby who can help you to a seat. The one thing people do not have to be embarrassed about in this situation is being overcome.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: On occasion, I have been known to take personal letters I have written with me to the office, where I can mail them more conveniently. When I run out of postage stamps, I sometimes use the office postage meter (after paying for the postage, of course). I have been told that it is rude to use a postage meter on personal mail, but I've never been able to find any rule to that effect. Can you enlighten me?

GENTLE READER: It is not the meter itself that violates etiquette, but the embarrassing impression you leave on the recipients that you violated office ethics. Miss Manners would consider it harder to figure out how to indicate that you reimbursed your employer than to lay in a supply of stamps.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: It occurs to me that we may be just a couple of weeks away from needing a refresher course on why gentlemen and ladies used to wear gloves. What with SARS beginning to spread, wearing gloves in public may once again become a reasonable precaution to help avoid disease. From what the medical people are saying, it should be more to the point than wearing masks.

GENTLE READER: Oh, but the etiquette of mask wearing can be so much more exciting. Miss Manners is thinking of 18th century Venice, when masks were worn half the year and the convention was that masked people must be considered unidentifiable. So if your spouse or creditors spotted you at an inconvenient time, knowing perfectly well it was you, it didn't count.

There is also earlier precedent for their usefulness during plagues. The masks, that is, not the spouses and creditors.

Other than in specific working situations, from surgery to gardening, gloves were not worn expressly for protective reasons. Unimaginable as it may now seem, people were simply in the habit of getting dressed when they went out, and this included hats and gloves.

Glove-related etiquette therefore had mostly to do with when to take them off: Gentlemen had to remove them before shaking hands, and, following a rule that is always being disgustingly violated in costume dramas, everyone had to remove them before touching food or drink.

So those rules are not terribly useful to ward off disease. Miss Manners would undertake to revise them if she thought we would all have to learn to live that way, but she trusts not. Emergency measures must sometimes be taken, during which people apologize to one another for suspending the conventions and everyone understands. But she does not want to encourage those who, even during ordinary times, view their fellow human beings chiefly as sources of contamination.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: While my wife and I were dining in a restaurant, the server made a mistake and brought one of us the wrong order. We can return the meal and ask for the original order, but that means that one of us will be eating while the other one is watching, which is a bit awkward.

We can accept the wrong order and grumble about it, but this is not an option we care to entertain. Or we can return both meals and ask that two fresh dinners be served so that we can enjoy the meal together. Are we being unreasonable in asking for two fresh dinners?

GENTLE READER: Not at all. The business of restaurants is not just to sell food, but to provide the experience of dining, and you would be cheated of that if you and your wife were forced to have successive dinners. Miss Manners would not worry too much about the inconvenience to the restaurant. First, it was their mistake, and second, you will only get that same dinner back re-heated.

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"What are we supposed to talk about -- the weather?"

Miss Manners hears this question often, delivered in a tone that is not at all nice. It is intended as an indictment of etiquette as being either so draconian as to repress all but the blandest conversation, or so wimpy as to be unable to tolerate discussion on any but the least controversial subjects.

She is thinking of barring these people from discussing the weather. With that contentious attitude, they are bound to make themselves socially impossible, hectoring everyone about the environment and pointing out that their listeners are stupid and immoral for, depending on their point of view, ruining it or ruinously protecting it.

But does not Miss Manners' reaction prove the accusations against etiquette? After all, she is questioning free speech in a free society, where airing conflicting opinions is not just a constitutional right, but the means by which we decide how to run the country! And not just shying away from talk about sex, religion and politics, but now -- the weather!

Hold on. This is Miss Manners pontificating, not the United States Supreme Court. She couldn't abridge free speech if she wanted to, and she doesn't want to. Nor does she want to restrict the exchange of ideas and opinions. On the contrary.

Far from squelching substantive discussion and debate, etiquette is what makes them possible. Admittedly, it does tell people when to keep their mouths shut and what they should not say. Is that what people mean by repressive?

Without such rules, there are no exchanges of ideas, only exchanges of set positions and insults. People who disagree rapidly move from talking over one another to shouting one another down, and from expressing their opinions on the matter at hand to expressing their opinions on the intelligence and morality of those who disagree with them.

It is only by adhering to strict etiquette that any controversy can truly be aired, whether it is at a legislature governed by Robert's Rules of Order, a courtroom governed by the judge's sense of decorum or a dinner party governed by social etiquette. The rules vary, but the idea is always to protect the assemblage's ability to accomplish its purpose.

It is true that at a dinner party, the purpose (aside from food, drink and those forlorn hopes of meeting someone new and interesting) is conversation. So why shouldn't people talk freely about things they feel strongly about?

Because Miss Manners doesn't trust them. She has seen them when they really get going on something they care deeply about. People who pooh-pooh the rule against discussing sex, religion and politics at the dinner table, under the impression that these areas are so overexposed that they have lost their former ability to inflame the passions, should recall the last time they heard people disagree about war, abortion, the death penalty, gay marriage and other such tepid topics.

Was there a true exchange of opinions? That needn't mean that someone ended up changing positions, only that they listened respectfully to someone else's point of view and debated the argument and not the goodwill of the person making it.

Occasionally, she concedes, people with manners have been known to participate in stimulating dinner conversation about hot topics -- but only if they have the self-control to wait until getting into the car before saying, "I had no idea those people were such morons."

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I'm a college student about to embark into the business world and I was wondering if you could please clear up the appropriate attire for cocktail parties before I make a faux pas.

I thought a cocktail dress fell above the knee, but my roommate insists it can be any length, as long as it is sans sequins or other decoration. Could you please advise?

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners doesn't suppose she could advise you to embark upon a career in which the first thing you need to know is something other than how to dress for drinks.

All right, then. In any decent line of work, people wear their business clothes to office parties, ladies adding whatever festive touches they can add in the ladies' room. You might want to be less decent when you go out socially, when cocktail dresses can be any length except floor length.

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