DEAR MISS MANNERS: In the world of business, is it ever appropriate to use rude language if a charming dunce is getting the best of you?

I lack what some call the "royal jelly." I am not particularly good-looking, and I do not possess the natural grace that sometimes enables others to persuade without the need for logic, reason or fact. I am intelligent, however, and I believe in my work. I am not content to allow my ideas to go unheard in the midst of a charm offensive.

I sometimes wonder if a well-placed insult might cut through the nonsense I sometimes hear from my colleagues. I know that an elegantly phrased barb can avoid the tint of rudeness, but when it comes from me, it usually flies over disinterested heads. But profanity will get people's attention, and hopefully will be forgiven after a well-reasoned argument.

I have always thought that etiquette and rhetoric were designed to help people overcome their natural limitations, but today's image-obsessed world seems oblivious to these arts, responding instead to a firm jaw and a steady gaze, or some such phrenology. I hope you can tell me I am wrong.

GENTLE READER: You are not good at being charming, so you are asking if being rude works just as well?

Well, no, actually it doesn't. As you were hoping, Miss Manners can tell you equivocally that you are wrong.

The reason that she can't tell you that unequivocally is that in the short run, the shock factor of rudeness does work. If you startle and intimidate your colleagues at meetings, and don't mind not having anyone with whom to go to lunch, you may, for a while, carry the day.

But then two things are bound to happen: You will be vilified and you will be copied. And when your colleagues are in the habit of using profanity, too, you will not only lose what advantage you had, but will retain the reputation for having lowered the tone.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I hope you can help me with what should be a simple question about addressing wedding envelopes. My mother, as do I, finds addressing women as "Mrs. Husband's Name" demeaning, as if the woman you are addressing has no value outside of her husband. You do an excellent job of updating etiquette with the times and I'd appreciate your advice on this issue. Is addressing all the envelopes "Mr. Husband and Ms. Wife Last Name" appropriate?

GENTLE READER: If you are interested in the dignity of women, you will kindly address them as they prefer to be addressed, and not remove the choice by superimposing yours on them in such a highly personal matter.

Miss Manners does indeed realize that etiquette must be updated to meet legitimate changes. She would not dream of addressing a lady as Mrs. with her husband's name if the lady had kept her original surname or preferred the title of Ms. But neither would she dream of mis-addressing as Ms. one who prefers the traditional form. And if nobody in either family knows the guests well enough to be able to find out which they prefer, what are they doing on the guest list?

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: For three generations, my husband's family owned a chain of department stores. At the height of their success, there were approximately 30 stores in three states. The stores were sold to another family-owned chain of stores about 10 years ago.

Since then, in an effort to preserve some family memorabilia for my daughter, who doesn't remember this part of the family history, I have collected several promotional and advertising items with the store name and logo on them. Many of the items are from the 1940s and '50s. Rather than store them away in a closet, I would like to display them in a tasteful and meaningful way. Most of the items are small -- paper fans and calendars, for example.

I know there are ways of displaying collectibles that reflect a person's interests and hobbies, but does having one's last name on the collectibles prohibit the display of this precious memorabilia?

GENTLE READER: There is a difference between a hobby collection and personal memorabilia, and what you have is in the latter category.

If you collected, say, seashells or Rembrandts, you could display them anywhere in the house. (Miss Manners is assuming that you are not a member of the Rembrandt or mollusk family.)

However, by the strictest standards -- meaning ones that are commonly flouted -- personal memorabilia, including family photographs, belong in rooms seen only by intimates of the residents, such as a library, study, bedroom or family sitting room.

Your case offers a particularly apt illustration of why. While your good friends presumably know something of your family history, other acquaintances whom you entertain may not. If they were unaware that your family no longer owned the chain, they might assume that you were advertising the goods. Or worse, that you were giving out logo-laden souvenirs.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: All I want for my birthday is dinner out with my life partner. I do not want all kinds of e-mails and talk about it from my co-workers. I work at a Fortune 500 company that views such things as important for employee bonding. Even though I requested that my birthday not be celebrated publicly, word has gotten around and I am getting unwanted attention. Is there any way I can respond to curb this? Or do I need to just put on a good face and get through the day?

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners is afraid so. Much as she sympathizes with your distaste for this kindergarten practice among working adults, you cannot tell people to buzz off while they are wishing you a happy birthday. And if that were all, it wouldn't be so bad. It's the cakes and collections for presents that create a burden for those who must participate and can hardly make the guest of honor feel beloved, as he surely knows he doesn't pony up for others because he loves them.

If you can find others who also consider the idea that they will work harder if colleagues are required to pretend to be their buddies patronizing, perhaps you can kill the practice in your office.

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"Causing a scene" is an etiquette felony.

The injunction against raising a ruckus in public was once so well understood that polite people had a hard time overcoming their proper inhibitions in cases of emergency. They had to reassure themselves that it was quite all right, under the right circumstances, to yell "Fire!" or "Help!" or "Watch out, there's a piano about to fall on your head!"

No longer. If you can't get on reality television, at least you can make a public scene.

What has long driven Miss Manners even wilder than she naturally is, is that many of the louts who make unnecessary scenes claim to be acting in the name of etiquette. Often they report to her how they detected a transgression and humiliated the transgressor with a whopping transgression of their own. Then they wait for Miss Manners to applaud.

And now we are seeing Act 2. Victims of rudeness who do not retaliate in kind (meaning rudeness, not kindness) feel the shame of a duty neglected, and expect Miss Manners to coach them back into the fray.

"I was sitting at a bar, minding my own business and enjoying a refreshing boisson," writes a Gentle Reader, "when a man sat down next to me, lit a cigarette, and began to blow smoke in my face and all over the rest of me.

"My first instinct was to move to another seat at the bar, where there were no smokers. However, the etiquette of this move was unclear to me. Should I just stand up and walk to a different seat with my drink, or should I excuse myself and then move, or should I tell him that I am moving because I don't like being poisoned by strangers in public places?"

A lady who was bawled out in the grocery store for leaving her cart in the middle of the aisle while she went to find plastic bags for her vegetables ruefully admitted that she had simply fled, not knowing what to say. "She was one of those loud-mouthed types, and I should have told her off when I had the chance."

"I'm trying to teach my kid good sportsmanship, and one of the fathers at his school boos visiting teams at the soccer games," a gentleman writes. "So I'm thinking of organizing the other fathers to boo him the next time he hogs the microphone at the parents' meeting."

"It was a perfect summer day, Red Sox in town, life couldn't be better," writes another Gentle Reader. "Except that the woman directly behind us never stopped talking for nine innings. She was some sort of baseball writer and let everyone for two rows know how important and connected to the players she is and how much she knows about the game. She never drew a breath until I thought I was going to go insane. Is that just part of life in being in a public area? Is there a polite way to ask someone to please shut up, if even for just a minute? Should we have moved and told her why?"

Miss Manners regrets having to say that yes, encountering rude people is a part of life in public areas. So are brawls in bars, shouting matches in grocery stores, derisive disruptions at meetings and fights in the bleachers.

But one can walk away rather than enter the fray. Because scenes often lead to violence, those who don't fight back seem oddly to fear the charge of cowardice. But they should not fear the even more bizarre charge of having taken up the very rudeness they deplore.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I was called for jury duty recently. I realized, after I had been questioned by the judge with the usual suitability for jury service questions, that I was the only one of the group that had answered "Yes/No, sir," or "Yes/No, Your Honor" to his questions. No one else questioned before or after me used any sort of honorifics with the judge or the lawyers who were doing the questioning.

I was left wondering if my use of honorifics in this situation was possibly perceived as out of place or antiquated? I also reflexively address other people in positions of authority, such as police officers, as "sir" or "ma'am." Am I being excessively formal for today's societal norms?

GENTLE READER: A courtroom is not an informal venue, as you would find out if trouble, rather than civic duty, had brought you there. Judges have far stricter means of enforcing etiquette than poor Miss Manners, who can only plead and scold.

So while a judge is unlikely to overlook the omission of the polite form you used, showing respect for his authority is a really good idea.

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