DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a patent attorney and when we submit our material to the Patent Office, we frequently write "Sir:" and ?then continue with the documentation.

However, ?clearly a problem arises in responding to the female patent examiners. Obviously I do not know the marital ?status of the patent examiners, so my question is how do I address the unnamed patent examiner, especially ?when I can gauge by experience level that they are likely older?

I believe that "Miss" seems far too ?informal for what is a very formal document and ?inappropriate for the fact that a number of the female ?examiners with experience are older women. "Ma'am" sounds too old-fashioned and doesn't look appropriate ?for formal communication. I believe "Madam" really ?should only be used if I am certain as to marital ?status. Any help with this situation would be ?appreciated.

GENTLE READER: Congratulations on inventing your own dictionary of definitions. Only you are unlikely to be successful by forcing your own beliefs on ones that already have conventional definitions in general circulation.

"Madam" is simply the female equivalent of "Sir. " The contraction "Ma'am" is for use in spoken address only, as is "Miss," which is only used to get the attention of someone who isn't looking, such as a waitress or a pedestrian about to walk into traffic.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: How quickly should one respond to personal e-mail?

I seem to remember a snail-mail rule that one was supposed to have a reply ready for the next post. Does a similar guideline exist in netiquette?

I'm asking because I have a list of several dozen far-flung friends to whom I send a group e-mail every week or so. I do this not only to let them know what my wife and I are up to but also to stimulate some sort of reply so I can keep up with them. Alas, relatively few respond. In fact, the biggest response came when I was sick recently and could barely lift my head, let alone dash off a witty communique. The brief absence of e-mail prompted several folks to write in, saying they missed my missives.

I suppose it's nice to be missed, but I'd rather receive the e-mail. I should hasten to point out that I respond swiftly to personal and work-related e-mails.

GENTLE READER: Charming as it is to compare your correspondence with the old custom of friends' regularly exchanging letters, Miss Manners is unconvinced. What you are doing is sending out a mass newsletter to people who have not shown interest in entering into a regular exchange.

They seem pleased enough to receive it, and Miss Manners does not mean to discourage you from continuing. But its being a hobby of yours does not require them to make it a hobby of theirs. You might try sending individualized letters that don't just report your activities but show interest in the particular life and interests of each potential correspondent separately to see if you can get a true exchange going. But not a weekly one. Invitations require immediate answers and duty letters must be timely, but it was never the case that chatty letters had to be answered by the very next post.

:

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I've read that it is acceptable to treat bacon strips as "finger food." A friend of mine argues that it is also acceptable to treat breakfast sausage links as finger food. I believe sausage links should be sliced and eaten with a fork.

Assuming we agree that breakfast sausage is not finger food, I have one more question. My friend will sometimes use a fork with her breakfast sausage, but she doesn't slice it into bite-size pieces. Instead, she stabs one end of the sausage link with her fork and then just bites off chunks as she goes (never really putting the fork down). I also believe this practice is improper. Who's right on this one?

GENTLE READER: Not the person who eats sausages as if they were lollipops, that's for sure. Why you choose to start the day with her, Miss Manners cannot imagine.

Sausages are eaten by hand only when they are discreetly enclosed in buns and eaten during baseball games. If you are eating breakfast at a reasonably formal restaurant, even bacon would not be finger food (which is a shame because it shatters when you attempt to eat it with a fork). If you share a home, Miss Manners would advise getting up after she has left the house.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am attending a trade school and there is a woman who attends the same school. We joined the same month and were in the same class for the first month. We sat next to each other in class and got along quite well. We then went off into separate tracks where we still see each other during breaks.

Here's the problem. I am convinced she is following rules from a book that strongly advocates that the female play hard-to-get. From what I remember, she is following its prescriptions to the letter.

I have never been suave with females and someone playing coy does absolutely nothing for me. If this whole idea is based on not communicating with me, how do I go about communicating the fact that she's completely wasting her time with these cutesy games and doing absolutely nothing to make herself more attractive to me?

I'd truly hate to give up on her as there did indeed seem to be something between us during that first month but I'm not about to play along and suggest that her game-playing did her any good.

GENTLE READER: You are therefore requesting a way to show interest in this lady while informing her that her behavior discouraged your interest. You are not asking much of Miss Manners, are you?

All right. You show interest in her by asking her out. If she refuses, you reply cheerfully, "Well, I know how busy you must be, so I won't pester you. But I'd be very pleased if you called me." And then you do nothing but greet her pleasantly when your paths happen to cross.

If she calls you, you were either mistaken or she has given up playing hard to get. If she never calls you, you are free to believe that it was out of coyness rather than disinterest, but the result is the same.

:

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband and I were invited to a dinner party at which my husband was seated at the main table next to the hostess, and I was seated at a far table in a corner, with my back to the other guests.

I made the best of it by engaging in warm conversation with those seated with me, but left at the end of the evening feeling like I would not care to accept another invitation to this woman's house. My husband only noticed when I brought it to his attention on our drive home.

Can you offer me any thoughts on the situation and advise me on how to respond if and when we are invited again? It certainly is a good reminder to be thoughtful and sensitive when we do seating charts for dinner parties. I don't need to be seated next to my husband, although many couples were, but I didn't appreciate being seated out in Siberia!

GENTLE READER: You have been exposed to too many headwaiters. They are the ones who invented the idea of Siberian tables, reaping a tidy side income from those buying their way out. You make it sound as if you were put in time out, facing the wall, but Miss Manners notices that there were other guests with you. She doubts that the hosts meant to insult them.

Yes, seating should be done sensitively, but it is attitudes such as this that make hosts give up and say, "Oh, sit anywhere."

And then people find themselves next to those with whom they have nothing in common -- or too much in common, as is the case with married couples. The purpose of a dinner party is to mix people with others who might interest them, not to give couples a night out to focus on each other.

Except at official functions, where rank might have to take precedence over compatibility, the only rules are to place a guest of honor, or the oldest person present, or the newcomer in a familiar circle, next to the host or hostess. After that, it is a matter of pairing people who are apt to discover conversational topics of mutual interest. If there are several tables, one way of avoiding the appearance of favoritism is to put one spouse near a host and the other not, so no one family would be given one position or the other.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Many decades ago, I took a female high school classmate to the prom. For many years, I blamed her for the crummy time we had that evening.

Now, through the wonder of a loving and caring partner, I have come to realize that it was entirely my fault. My attempts to be "funny" were insulting and rude. I feel terrible about this. Should I attempt to contact this person and apologize, or is it better to avoid reminding her of what must have been a horrible experience.

GENTLE READER: It depends on how thoroughly you have gotten over your high school arrogance. Miss Manners can imagine your making this into an amusing, self-deprecating story that could well be appreciated. But if there is any danger of your implying that you were of such importance to the lady that she must still be smarting over this decades later, it would only go to show that you had not really changed.

: