DEAR MISS MANNERS: Can you assist with some advice for managing longer skirts, especially on stairs? I have a raincoat that I find especially difficult to maneuver during my fraught commute.

GENTLE READER: What you need is a skirt lifter. Neither a pervert nor a trainbearer, this a Victorian gadget with a hook to suspend it from the belt and a clamp to lift long skirts above what was left in the streets by those charming horse-drawn carriages.

As skirt lifters are scarce and expensive, Miss Manners is happy to be able to tell you that it is also correct to use the hands. You hold them straight down your sides, and each of them gathers a handful of material and then moves upwards, a rather graceful gesture. Of course you need your hands free to do this, so you will have to hang your other stuff -- purse, briefcase, telephone, umbrella -- elsewhere on your body.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I work for a company that specializes in wedding products for gay and lesbian couples and, because we offer wedding invitations and bill ourselves as "mother-approved shopping," we often get questions about proper etiquette when addressing envelopes and wedding gifts to gay and lesbian couples.

Though this seems to be somewhat uncharted territory, I find that I am able to offer recommendations to my clients that follow the basic rules of respect, or that can be modified off of traditional etiquette for heterosexual unmarried couples or those married couples who do not share the same last names. With the recent shift in legal marriage, however, I have found myself stuck in how to best answer this question:

How do I address a wedding invitation to a lesbian (gay) married couple who have the same last name? Can one add in both names with something along the lines of Mrs. Sally & Betty Jones, or is it most proper to drop one name (Mrs. & Mrs. Betty Jones)? If so, how does one determine which name to drop?

GENTLE READER: "Mrs. and Mrs." not only encounters the problem you mention, but it is jarring to those who know the traditional rule that "Mrs." is never used with a lady's first name. Furthermore, those who violate that rule do so to indicate divorce or widowhood, neither of which is appropriate here.

You should not be looking to the Mr. and Mrs. form, in which one person's given name disappears, and which is increasingly avoided for that reason. Sally is not becoming Mrs. Betty Jones nor is Betty becoming Mrs. Sally Jones.

After all this carping, you will be surprised to hear that Miss Manners has a simple solution, which she could have come out with in the first place.

Use the plural form of "Mrs." or, in the case of two gentlemen, the plural form of "Mr." These are, respectively, "Mesdames" and "Mssrs" ("The Mesdames Sally and Betty Jones," "The Messrs. Trevor and William Cartwright").

All right, Miss Manners admits that these are odd plurals. But they are at least traditional and dignified.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I invited a couple for lunch. After accepting, the lady called and left a message on my answering machine saying that she would bring sandwiches, dessert, plates, napkins, silverware and cups. She requested that I have iced tea available.

I returned her call telling her that was unacceptable to me. I asked that, if she was unable to eat any particular food or was allergic to anything, I would prepare and serve the lunch as I had sufficient dishes, etc. I'm sure my tone of voice showed my frustration. How should I have handled this situation?

GENTLE READER: By thanking her for her offer, rather than declaring it unacceptable, but rejecting it just as firmly. Miss Manners is afraid that your friend is one of those people who, in the hope of being no trouble, makes a perfect nuisance of herself. Attempting to hijack someone else's hospitality may be well-meant, but it is rude.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: A relative of mine will soon be moving to Europe. She is unhappily anticipating all kinds of disparaging questions about American politics, having had these unpleasant exchanges when she lived in Europe before.

The questions typically run along the lines of "How can Americans vote for that candidate?" or "How can they support such a policy?" -- yet are delivered in such a way as to imply that Americans are stupid or naive.

We were hoping you could suggest a way to respond to unkind opinions masquerading as curiosity that would neither indicate that she agrees with the opinions nor open the subject to an unpleasant disagreement about politics.

GENTLE READER: Your relative should be studying the politics of the country in which she will be living. This is not only a responsible thing to do, but it will give her the information to make delicate inquiries about the state of her hosts' satisfaction with their own politicians.

Miss Manners has yet to find a country where everyone is fully satisfied with the leaders, no matter how much electoral support these people received. A few polite and neutrally worded questions about the host country's issues of the day should turn the conversation from country against country to the universal harmony of citizens complaining about their own politicians.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: In the hospital that I work in, many of the patients and their families are not fluent in English. We use translators or ask various staff members to translate for us.

My question is about eye contact. In a recent scenario, the doctor only looked at the nurse (who was also the translator), both while the doctor told the nurse what to translate and while the nurse was translating to the patient's mother. I thought that the doctor was being rude to the mother by not looking at the mother at all during the exchanges.

Who are we supposed to look at when we are speaking to the translator: the translator or the patient/parent? When the translator is speaking to the patient/parent, do we look at the translator or the patient/parent?

GENTLE READER: The doctor made the intuitive choice, which is to look at the person who is in the physical act of speaking. It is the wrong choice, as you point out, but the right choice is a complicated one.

Miss Manners agrees that the doctor should be looking at the parent, because it is the parent with whom the doctor is having the conversation, however indirectly. But it is also rude to talk about someone, even a child, without acknowledging that person's presence, and to accept the services of a translator without acknowledging that person's presence.

Doing all this, and eyeing the medical records as well, is a skill that has to be learned. You might suggest at a staff meeting that this is one of the skills needed in a hospital that serves patients who do not speak English.

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