DEAR MISS MANNERS: My mother taught me that one has shoulders covered for dinner when the occasion is formal (or even "festive," in the new locution). Shoulders may be bared after dinner, if there's dancing. Still the case?

GENTLE READER: Lest anyone suspect your mother's sound counsel of being based on prudery, Miss Manners points out that no mention was made of bosoms. As long as the shoulders are covered, much of the bosom need not be, a situation of which Victorian ladies took startling advantage.

The distinction is between a dinner dress and a ball dress. A strapless dress worn at dinner gives the effect, to the opposite side of the table, of a naked lady sitting in a bathtub. More importantly, a dinner dress does not have a billowing skirt likely to encroach on the gravy-spilling area allotted to the gentlemen on either side. Ball dresses may lack sleeves and add the extra material to the skirt.

While it is true that dinners sometimes include dancing, and balls sometimes feature midnight suppers, Miss Manners expects ladies to follow the rules for the primary events they attend. If they solve the problem by stripping half way through the evening, she promises to look the other way.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I work for a large corporation where, due to budget constrictions, many people spend time in "phone meetings." More and more of these people are acquiring wireless headsets that allow them to migrate from their cubicles.

I and a few others have become aware of these people actively talking in these calls while wandering around the office. While this may be an advantage for them during long meetings, many of us are finding it very rude and distracting.

If they stay in their cubicles people can still hear them; however, it is always easier to tune them out when the sound remains in one place.

I can see if a person is a passive participant, doing more listening than talking, but the constant wandering by people's cubicles while they are trying to focus and concentrate is becoming a problem. Some people have taken to working from home, more and more, because of this. Personally, I do not have the luxury of doing that.

I am not sure how to prevent these people from doing this, but if you publish this, perhaps they will recognize themselves. During summer, they could opt to wander outside for their meetings. If I had a lot of meetings and a wireless setup, that is how I would choose to stretch my legs. Otherwise, there are other areas besides around the cubicle areas they can go to as well.

GENTLE READER: What you need in your office is a bulletin board, electronic or cork. Miss Manners dares say that all it would take to solve this problem is to use it to inform the wanderers frankly, and without rancor, that the noise is distracting.

However, when it comes to anything involving mobile telephones, the usual method is for those annoyed to make accusations imputing not only the manners but also the motivations of the telephoners. While Miss Manners approves your wanting to solve this problem without confrontation, she assures you that polite requests need not be insulting.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband and I will be celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary next year if the Lord is willing and we are still both here, and I would like to have our names printed on the napkins. The question is which one of his names to use.

All our friends and family that live in the state where we were born and attended school called him by his middle name. He was in the Army for over 20 years, and wherever we lived and where we have lived for almost 40 years, people call him by his first name.

We are hoping some of our friends and relatives will be coming for the reception from our home state. I don't want to have two stacks of napkins. Kind of confusing, as people here would wonder what is going on. So, which name should be put on the napkins?

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners has more faith in your friends than you do. They are unlikely to scrutinize the napkins and say, "Huh? Who is this guy? Aren't you two married to each other?"

If you sense a danger, however, you could put his full name, along with yours, on the napkins. Etiquette has not deigned to prescribe a form for paper napkins, but such formality is not out of place on marriage-related occasions.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have just discovered that I have been behaving outrageously for most of my adult life, and I am as mortified as anyone with decent self-esteem could possibly be under the circumstances.

I have always eaten the roll poised on the small plate on the right side of my dinner plate, usually behind or a snudge to the right or left of my wine glass(es). At dinner last night, I was informed by my right-hand neighbor that I was buttering her bread.

I hoped to make restitution by reaching for what I had thought was my husband's roll (he was on my left), only to discover that he had already torn off and devoured a large chunk of it, making it a less-than-appetizing substitute for my dinner-mate on the right. The quandary circled clockwise around the table until a pristine roll was discovered three places to my right and was passed along to my now-starving neighbor. I will be terrified of bread for the rest of my life.

Am I (and everyone from 7 o'clock through 3 o'clock) the only person in the universe who just never knew? Does it signify that this happened in Europe and not in America? Please set me straight. It's not that I don't believe that I was wrong but, after so many years of living this lie, a second opinion from an impeccable source will reinforce the lesson.

GENTLE READER: The second opinion is that you should stop stealing bread from the grasp of the hungry. This is as shady a practice in America as in Europe, and the attempt to make your husband look greedy for the same offense did not escape Miss Manners' notice.

When there are auxiliary individual food plates, such as for bread or salad, yours are on your left. Your water and wine glasses are on your right. Miss Manners hopes that you are sincerely reformed now, and are not harboring the notion that the distinction only demonstrates how silly etiquette is. It is no more ridiculous -- or less necessary -- than rules about which side of the street to drive on.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: "Excuse me!" exclaimed the stranger in a tone so innocent and friendly that I looked at him in acknowledgement before I could think better of it. (After all, he might just be asking for directions.)

"My wife is having a baby right this minute and I need to get to the hospital. But I've just been mugged..."

Requests for money preceded by elaborate backstories are annoying and my eventual response is always the same, but I still feel bad about cutting off the speaker before he or she has actually asked for a handout. Is there an acceptable way to terminate these conversations as soon as their objective becomes clear?

GENTLE READER: You need only say, "Sorry, I can't help" and move on, saving the speaker the necessity of making a full-length pitch in vain. Miss Manners is even sorrier about the necessity of concluding that someone in apparent distress must necessarily be a con artist.

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