DEAR MISS MANNERS: In my dental practice, I see a lot of children who are grammatically challenged. As their dentist, would it be proper for me to gently correct them of their trespasses against the English language, or should I turn a deaf ear to their oral cavity?

GENTLE READER: Are your young patients so overly eager to spend time with you that you feel the need to make the experience less enticing than it already is?

And have you already taught them to take such perfect care of their teeth that you are ready to move into other educational areas?

If so, Miss Manners hopes you will volunteer as an English tutor. In your day job, the mouth is under your professional jurisdiction, but the words emanating from it are not. Youth should not be considered an invitation to embarrass people about their general inadvertent failings.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My best friend, and college roommate, is blind. She has been blind since she was 4. When we go anywhere together, for example, grocery stores or restaurants, people that are helping us direct every question to me including questions that she should answer when she is standing right in front of them.

They look at me and ask "What does she want to drink?" or "Does she want...?"

Most times I pointedly ask her what the question was to demonstrate that she can answer on her own, but even after that they still continue to direct questions to me. How do I politely get them to direct their questions to her?

GENTLE READER: If Miss Manners understands what you mean by asking your friend what the question was, you could have an amusing dialogue going:

"What was the question?"

"He wants to know what I want to drink."

"Well, what do you want to drink?' and so on.

But in the interest of time, and of gently making these people realize how thoughtless and ridiculous they are being, you could simply reply, "I don't know. Why don't you ask her?"

DEAR MISS MANNERS: A few months ago, I offered my aunt a few hours of free babysitting to thank her for lending me her clarinet for a semester. The other day, I came over to watch the kids for five hours, half of which time they spent napping. As I was leaving, she paid me what looked like a 20 and two singles.

When I returned home, I realized that I had forgotten my offer for free babysitting. Then, reaching into my pocket, I discovered that she had actually handed me $40!

I called her up immediately and reminded her that I was doing this for free. She wouldn't hear it. I asked if she had accidentally given me more than she meant to, but she insisted she meant to give me the 40. My dad suggests I mail her the money in an envelope with a note, but my hunch is that I should just let it go. What do you think?

GENTLE READER: That you and your aunt are both charmingly generous. Rather than returning the money, it would be more gracious, Miss Manners believes, to use it to take your cousins on a little excursion, making it clear that they are your guests, and this has nothing to do with babysitting.

:

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Our baby's nanny is beloved to all of us, and we'd like to invite her to be our guest at the first-birthday party. If she attends, should we pay her for her time and for carfare?

GENTLE READER: Absolutely.

No doubt your nanny loves the baby dearly and wouldn't miss the party for the world. But hard as it may be for you, as parents, to imagine, she also has her own life and other ways to spend her free time.

Furthermore, she is not going to stand staring out the window if the baby needs something while you are not in immediate attendance. So there she would be, giving up her free time to work for free.

Miss Manners would consider the most gracious solution to be first merely to ask the nanny to be there and to pay her for that in advance or offer a compensatory day off, but then, at the event itself, to say, "I'm sure I can manage -- please just consider yourself a guest and have a good time."

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Here in the United States, people just say "hello" when answering the telephone, and to me it's very impolite not to say at least your first name.

It is also very confusing because I have to ask the person that has answered who it is. Some people in the same family can have very similar voices. I am from Scandinavia, and there we answer with your full name, and some people even say their telephone number. Is there a historic explanation? Privacy thing? Safety issue?

GENTLE READER: Actually, there is an historic reason. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was startled enough during the first test simply to shout to his assistant, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you!" Although this remains the attitude of most callers, it is impolite to assume that others should be at your beck and telephone call.

Dr. Bell then thought better of it and suggested "Hoy, hoy," but it was Thomas Edison who refined this by inventing the word "Hello."

Miss Manners agrees that the current American social system, by which the caller then has to guess whom he has reached, is awkward. (The business system does require answering with the name of the person and/or business. And sometimes using the telephone system's identification system solves the problem, although people do make calls from telephones other than their own, and home lines usually serve more than one person.)

It results in such nonsensical floundering as:

"Tony?"

"No."

"Oh, I'm trying to reach Tony. Is this his son? You sound just like him."

"Who are you and what do you want?"

But it strikes Miss Manners as the responsibility of the caller, not the callee, to give an identification first, as is done in some countries. The callee could well cite a safety or privacy issue, or could simply want to pretend he is someone else when he finds out who is calling.

:

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I manage a busy office in a large organization that prides itself on its political correctness, among other things.

About two-thirds of our staff are women, who regularly greet each other with hugs, pecks on the cheek or quick shoulder rubs. The camaraderie and team spirit are wonderful to see, but they unfortunately do not extend to the male members of the staff. Our training about sexual harassment has left male staffers wary of touching anyone, male or female.

This leads to awkward scenes, when, for example, a mixed group arrives for a meeting, the women are all greeted with hugs, and the men get a cursory "Hi, John."

I fear that we are actually creating a workplace that is hostile to men with this behavior, and a few of our male staff have confided feeling this way to me. I have contemplated a "no hugs" rule for everyone, but it seems rather cold and may exceed my authority as the manager of just one part of a large organization. Any suggestions?

GENTLE READER: That you realize that there is something between hugs and cold. In the context of the workplace, that means requiring professional behavior.

However much female members of your staff love one another (and have you considered how this would affect colleagues they didn't?), an office is no place for such physical demonstrations, whether or not they meet the definition of sexual harassment. There would be no question of that if you hired a married couple, but Miss Manners imagines that you still wouldn't want to have them canoodling on the job.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My boyfriend and I purchased our first home a year ago, in a modest neighborhood in the suburbs. We are very happy here and for the most part we keep to ourselves. We have met our neighbors, but we only know them well enough to wave as we pass, which seems to be an acceptable state of affairs for everyone involved.

This afternoon, however, I was sitting on my front porch and I happened to overhear our next-door neighbor complaining about us to the neighbor across the street. I'm sure he didn't know I was within earshot.

Unfortunately for my curiosity, I could only hear that his complaint was definitely about us, but not what we might be doing to make him complain. We don't invite rowdy people over, we don't allow our dogs to bark or run loose, we try to keep the place looking nice. I really have no idea what the problem might be.

So now that I know that we are causing strife in the neighborhood, what do I do with this information? This neighbor has never indicated to us that there is a problem. Should I wait to see if he says something to us, since he doesn't know I heard him? Should I tell him what I heard? I'd rather not continue causing offense to anyone, and certainly not someone I have to live next to.

GENTLE READER: Nor do you want your neighbor to go around complaining that you are eavesdropping on him. So confessing is not a good idea.

But doing something neighborly is. Miss Manners suggests leaving him a bouquet of flowers from your garden or a plate of cookies with a pleasant note.

: