DEAR MISS MANNERS: A coworker generously opened his home to a family displaced by Hurricane Katrina. He attends a church, and the congregation raised funds to defray some of the expense.

The guest family is of another religion. They stayed with him for several weeks. The congregation asked the family, now settled and working, to attend a church service and, apparently, formally thank the givers, who feel that they made sacrifices and that the family should be willing to sacrifice their time and overcome their discomfort with the religion, and grant the request. After postponing and hesitating a couple of times, the family flat declined.

The congregation thinks the service is the only time they are all together, and so the meeting should be at the service. The family now thinks and says that the whole project was a proselytizing venture. There is resentment on both sides.

As I heard this develop, the original gift of hospitality was really disinterested. How do you read this? I thought it wrong in general to ask for a public display of gratitude, but of course they don't frame it quite like that. What might have been a better course once the hospitality and gift money were given? I suppose the family should just attend, but do you see some validity to their objections?

GENTLE READER: What a heartbreaking example this is of good intentions not being enough if they come without the manners to make the good intentions clear.

Miss Manners does not doubt the goodness of your coworker and those who enabled him to help the displaced family. She also trusts that the hurricane victims are not monsters of ingratitude (or the host family would have become well aware of this during the visit).

But charity to individuals requires particular delicacy in preserving their dignity. However the invitation was framed, you, at least, picked up on the fact that it was a summons to perform a public display of gratitude, which, as you note, is rude. Obviously, the family caught that, too. For them, it also seemed to require that they participate in church services.

This does not excuse their merely refusing. They do owe gratitude, and they could have responded that they would very much like to thank the congregation, but preferred to do so after services.

The problem would have been averted if only the congregation had really framed the request tactfully. "Our congregation would like to meet you, as we naturally take an interest in your welfare," it might have said in effect. An invitation to meet people after services would have left the family with the option of attending services as observers and the ability to thank the congregation in the dignified position of guests, rather than as ingrates who had to be nudged to behave.

Miss Manners can't bear to leave it at that. She urges you to request one more act of charity from your congregation. This would be a letter to the family, apologizing that its invitation was awkwardly put, and assuring the family that there was no intention of proselytizing, but that people who had taken an interest in them simply wanted to meet them.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I'm distressed about the proper usage of the words "mistress" and "affairs."

I was raised to believe that an affair is between a married person and an unmarried person. If the unmarried person is a woman, she is referred to as the man's mistress.

Lately, I've read newspaper articles describing a relationship between two unmarried people as an affair. The woman in that affair is referred to as a mistress. Which then raised the question of whether a person who is married, not living with his spouse and dating a woman is having an affair with his mistress or just dating someone.

Clearly an affair and a mistress are disparaging terms while "dating someone" is much more benign. I would hate for a woman to be wrongfully accused of being a mistress when she is merely a girlfriend.

GENTLE READER: This is the wrong subject on which to appeal to dear old-fashioned usage, Miss Manners is afraid. There was nothing nice said then about dating that included sleepovers. You are thinking of the distinction between two different terms: adultery, which involves a married person, and fornication, which is between single people. And neither of them was used kindly.

You might get some comfort from digging even more deeply into tradition, way back to the part that no one but Miss Manners remembers. Then you would find that until the 19th century, "mistress" was a benign word, the female equivalent of "mister." It had nothing to do with the activities to which you refer, but was merely an honorific that could refer equally to a respectable wife and a respectable single lady.

However, you would be better off objecting to the present usage of the term as sexist. The suggestion is that there is a master in charge, although no pejorative term is used for him, and a subservient mistress. It would be more reasonable to call both lovers, to use the impossibly coy terms boyfriend and girlfriend or to speak of them as Very Good Friends.

That last is Miss Manners' choice. Distinguishing between dating and having an affair nowadays gives her more information about any individuals in question than she cares to have.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My vanity has put me in a frustrating situation. I had an appointment with an excellent hair stylist. The appointment was mixed up. It was the stylist's fault. I was so mad I went to another stylist. My haircut does not even compare to my previous haircuts.

Since then, my stylist called and apologized and offered another appointment. I cannot show up with a haircut from another stylist. I don't know if I should call and make an appointment for a few weeks from now and hope for the best or avoid the stylist.

GENTLE READER: How about conquering your vanity?

Not your vanity about your hair, but the kind that prevents you from admitting to the stylist that you made a mistake in going to someone else. Miss Manners promises you that the stylist will not be sorry to see whatever mess needs his or her artistic touch.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: Please tell me that proper etiquette for gift card receiving is more than just "thank you for the gift card." I would like to know what the receiver at least plans to do with the card, and to tell me in a note or a phone call exactly what they did do with it is even better. If nothing else, make something up!

To me this seems logical and obviously more polite. Isn't it amazing that people don't always think that way?

GENTLE READER: Yes, why aren't people more thoughtful about presents? Why don't they take the trouble to think about what items their friends and relatives might enjoy instead of instructing them to go shopping for themselves?

It is true that it would be gracious for the recipient to announce the result of such an offering if something, even a possibility, springs to mind. But as Miss Manners does not brook delays in writing thanks, she is not going to require a second letter of thanks to report the results. A gift certificate is not thoughtful enough to require double duty.

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