DEAR MISS MANNERS: When I have gone to visit several friends in the past few months, and have found myself in search of clean linens when wishing to take a shower, none are available. When I was growing up, whenever we had guests, my parents would always make sure a clean washcloth and towel were available for each guest staying with us. I thought that providing clean linens for guests was simply common courtesy.

But having come across so many people who don't provide such a simple item to their guests, I wonder -- am I being snobby or are they being sloppy?

GENTLE READER: Perhaps discouraged by guests who steadfastly ignore the guest towels in the powder room, they have come to think that all their guests are drip-dry. Or worse.

While hosts are supposed to supply towels, you can surely assume the failure to do so was an oversight and request them. Miss Manners only hopes that you discovered the omission before you turned on the water.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: Hoo, boy. My live-in boyfriend found out his mother paid less for her cable service than we do, and asked to borrow one of her bills so that I could find out what her deal was and maybe get the same one. I did, and found we had more channels than she; I put a yellow Post-It on the bill reading, "She's got fewer channels than we do -- can't do any better."

He inadvertently gave the bill back to her with the Post-It still intact. She asked him to have me call her, then blasted me for referring to her as "she." "I'm not a 'she,'" she maintained in the most adamant terms. "I have a name, and I insist that you use it when referring to me."

I think this is utterly crazy-nutso-cuckoo. However, I have to live in this family. Do I need to apologize for using a pronoun in a private note that was misdirected to her attention, or should I just pretend the entire conversation (during which I could not get a word in edgewise) never happened?

I'm not kidding, by the way.

GENTLE READER: Hoo, boy, is right. This lady is spoiling for a fight, and Miss Manners is afraid that anything short of an apology will deliver it to her.

Referring to people by using pronouns is an insult only when obviously done to avoid pronouncing the name. You could hardly be expected to scrawl a note saying "Mrs. Humper has fewer channels..."

Only she has announced that she does expect it. If you value peace, Miss Manners recommends writing her a note along these lines: "Dear Mrs. Humper. I want to assure you, Mrs. Humper, that I meant no disrespect. I am delighted to have the privilege of knowing you, Mrs. Humper, and am distressed that I inadvertently displeased you. Believe me, Mrs. Humper, to be your sincere admirer..."

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I know you oppose having wedding guests "cater" a wedding reception, but my situation seems different. I am paying for all the food and decorations, but I have some talented relatives who want to help decorate the church before the wedding and clean it afterward, and some relatives who want to serve punch, cut cake, buy and assemble sandwiches and hors d'oeuvres (I am paying them back for this), and decorate the reception hall and clean up and do dishes after it's all over.

Pretty much all my relatives (four generations) that I see every summer at our family campout are going to work all day and all evening of the wedding/reception to make it special for me, but they want to and they'll be there anyway, so why should I spend extra money on strangers to come be decorators, caterers and dishwashers when this would just leave my relatives with nothing to help out with?

GENTLE READER: The key to what would make your situation different from that of the folks who think that the momentous occasion of their marriages entitles them to conscript everyone they know into service is in that question of your relatives wanting to.

How do you know they want to? If they have said, "Please, please, let us do something, we want to be involved so we feel it is truly a family wedding," Miss Manners has no objection to their doing whatever it is that they volunteer to do. If you know because you just figure that it would be an honor to serve you, the objection stands.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband and I have always enjoyed entertaining, and I am not willing to give up on parties, but I want to protect us and particularly my husband from insults.

My husband has begun his own business and is working very long hours to build it up. I am winding down my career, and am very happy to take on the chief responsibility for our continued parties and dinners, so he can get some rest.

But apparently our new arrangement is not acceptable. One woman, a very long-time friend, pointed out at two recent dinner parties that my husband hadn't helped to put on the dinner. Her tone was very hostile. We did not invite her to our last party and did not accept a recent invitation from her, just saying we had other plans. (I have thought of calling her personally, but am not sure how that would go.) Another friend has commented, but fortunately only to me and not at the dinner table.

I don't want to keep limiting my invitation list, and would also like to avoid having to explain or apologize for our new shift. My husband is very sensitive about "being insulted in his own house." Is there anything you can suggest?

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners is old enough to remember when this sort of insult was commonplace -- with one small difference. It was a husband who did cook, clean or otherwise participate in running the household at whom scorn and scolding were then directed.

Doing so was rude then, and it is rude now. To chastise one's hosts is unspeakable, and to interfere in how wife and husband choose to run their household and their lives makes it even less speakable, as it were.

While such impertinence is ample reason for striking someone from your guest list, busybodiness is rampant, and Miss Manners doesn't want to kill your social life. The alternate choice is to defend him, but not by saying, "Oh, I don't mind," which would only make it worse. Say, "He and I divide our work as we see fit. I'm sorry it displeases you, but that is the way we do things."

Anyone who fails to fall into an embarrassed silence, but rather continues by telling you how you should do things, really must be dropped.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband and I stopped at a restaurant where the hostess asked for a name for our party.

Instead of writing the name I told her, she wrote an obscenity that sounds similar to my husband's last name. There were several other restaurants nearby, so my husband and I chose to leave.

Would it have been more proper to tell the hostess, "Excuse me, but that obscenity you wrote is not the name of our party," to point at the obscenity and ask her to cross it off her list, or to stick around and snicker with the rest of the guests when the name was announced?

GENTLE READER: They wouldn't just snicker -- they would whip around to see who it was who had such a name. And what would you do then? Take a bow?

Of course you should have corrected the hostess. Miss Manners requires people to give -- or to pretend to give -- others the benefit of the doubt when there is a possibility of an honest mistake. But as she has her doubts about this one, she would have allowed you to say it in an icy tone.

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