DEAR MISS MANNERS: We have a large, extended circle of friends who are essentially like family. We also have a large, conveniently located home and frequently have overnight guests. It's not uncommon for a weekend breakfast to include a dozen or more people.

I love cooking for and serving that many guests, but I find the cleanup also winds up falling to me. The results are that instead of spending my day socializing with our guests, I end up in the kitchen, cooking one meal, cleaning up from it, and then beginning preparations for the next.

Short of hiring a maid (simply not a realistic solution for us), or posting a sign-up sheet for KP, is there a polite way to encourage guests to help out? Under the circumstances, is it appropriate to ask for their help? (I would never consider asking invited dinner guests to help me clean up.)

GENTLE READER: A stalwart defender of freely given hospitality, Miss Manners nevertheless recognizes a difference between sometime guests and the like-family sort.

Certainly, dinner guests should never be asked to help. If they want to be helpful, they can answer invitations immediately, refrain from stating their food likes and dislikes, show up on time, socialize cheerfully and leave on time. If they offer to help clear the table or clean up, they may be firmly discouraged, but if such offers are accepted, the work should be kept to a minimum. Overnight guests may volunteer to do more, and should keep their rooms neat.

Like-family is, however, a different category (which, oddly enough, doesn't always include all relatives -- just liked-family, as it were). Friends who qualify have the privilege of proposing their own visits -- subject, of course, to the convenience of the hosts -- but they also have added responsibility. Miss Manners finds it unconscionable that a dozen such people loll around your house while you labor in the kitchen.

Your excuse for asking for help should be that you want to spend more time with your guests. You could take aside a particularly close friend and confide that the work is getting you down a bit, considering that you miss much of the fun; your apparent helplessness, plus the implied threat that you might be closing down, should lead that person to suggest organizing a rotating system so that no one gets left out all the time.

With any luck, this will produce shame, not only in the organizer but in everyone, and you will be approached to design that sign-up sheet.

The risk you take is that they will all pile into the kitchen, having a wonderful time, while you rest alone in the living room.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What do you call the objects that hold up silverware off the table? I have a set and cannot find any info about them.

GENTLE READER: They are knife rests. When flatware was commonly used for different courses, the knives, and their friends the forks, would plop down, exhausted, when no one was looking. And leave a mess on the tablecloth, which can be avoided through the judicious use of knife rests.

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Why, upon marriage, were Camilla Parker Bowles and Catherine Middleton styled the Duchess of Cornwall and the Duchess of Cambridge, rather than "Princess Camilla" or "Princess Catherine"?

GENTLE READER: You would have to ask the British queen, who bestowed those titles. The general belief is that the public would have resented a new Princess of Wales after the death of the previous one. And perhaps it would not have been politic to give the latest member of the family a higher title than that lady's stepmother-in-law.

But under no circumstances would they have been "Princess Camilla" or "Princess Catherine." And although the late Princess of Wales was widely referred to as "Princess Diana," that was incorrect; correctly, she was Diana, Princess of Wales.

This is because the British system makes a distinction between birth and marriage as a way of acquiring titles. With the exception of a queen consort, the title precedes the given name only when inherited. Thus, the late Princess of Wales was, before her marriage, Lady Diana, as her father was an earl. But of course that is a title of nobility, not royalty, and a courtesy title at that. Under the primogeniture system, the children of a living noble have only courtesy titles because they are commoners.

Got that? Glad you live in a republic, so you don't have to know these things?

Oh, wait, Miss Manners realizes that you probably do, because you've been watching "Downton Abbey."

The mother in that series, born an American, is Cora, Countess of Grantham, or Cora Crawley, the family surname, or Lady Grantham, but never "Lady Cora." Her daughters, however, all have "Lady" before their first names because their father is an earl. But remember: That is a courtesy title, and they are commoners. So they could, if the series lasts long enough, stand for election to the House of Commons.

No, that is not a spoiler. Miss Manners has no idea what is happening to these characters. She tuned out when she saw them wearing their gloves to dinner in their own house.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: We've all been told "it's not polite to stare." But with the recent explosion of tattoos and body art on anybody and everybody, I'm wondering if that's still the case.

Since most of the painted ladies (and men) have put lots of money into their backs, arms, calves, ankles, etc., is it now rude not to stare? If I felt that strongly about something that I would invest money and endure significant pain to display it on my body, I'd feel bad if people didn't spend time examining me closely.

GENTLE READER: Your reasoning troubles Miss Manners. If you had put huge amounts of money and endured great pain to have a hip replacement, would that make it polite for people to stare at that area of your body?

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I received an invitation seven days before a wedding. With it was a request for money to help pay for the honeymoon in Bali. I barely know the person.

GENTLE READER: And you are not moved to want to send the couple on an expensive trip? How can you be so hard-hearted?

Miss Manners can only hope that this is because you have worthier outlets for philanthropy.

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I've been eating out for more than half a century and can't recall a single occasion when my lap napkin prevented a spill onto my pants. All it ever did was fall on the floor.

From your position of prominence, could you not make a plea for rationality? So many times a napkin could have saved me from getting spaghetti, wine or grease on my shirt front, necktie or suit.

Shouldn't manners make sense instead of being a stupid formality that prevents you from embarrassing yourself? GENTLE READER: Rationality in etiquette? Are you out of your mind?

Well, no, Miss Manners admits that there is some, although not nearly as much as people think. The reasons tend to be invented retroactively to justify long-standing customs. And if etiquette had been arrived at through rational thought, thinking people in all cultures, at all periods of history, would behave alike (presuming they were polite).

What we are really dealing with is folk custom, and eating rituals are among the most basic of them, as any anthropologist can tell you. So it is all the more strange that many Americans, not just you, have not progressed beyond the bib stage. (The napkin is not intended to protect the lap from falling food, but to be available when needed to blot the mouth.) Miss Manners supposes it has to do with the demise of the nightly family meal.

You are suggesting that we give up and admit that we are incapable of getting food into our mouths without getting it all over ourselves. With all due sympathy to your plight, Miss Manners is unwilling to make that concession -- and to lose the company of people whose appetites are adversely affected by looking at your food stains.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have a friend who constantly bragged about what a wonderful marriage she had. After 30 years of marriage, her husband ran off with a gal 20 years younger. She, of course, was devastated and we all supported her.

Now it has been three years, and she is in a new relationship. Whenever a group of us are together, all of us married except her, she belittles our marriages and puts down marriage.

We are getting a bit tired of this. We listened and were supportive the first couple of years and put up with the comments due to her grief. Now we want her to stop. How to respond when she does this next time we all see her?

GENTLE READER: Each of you should respond, every time, by saying, "Next time we hope you'll be as lucky as we are."

It is not just because this is a kind thing to say that Miss Manners recommends it. It is also because the rehearsed chorus will alert your friend that there has been talk about her repeated disparagement of marriage, and it is time to stop.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What is the rule of thumb with men's suit coats that have the maker's cloth tag tacked on the sleeve of a coat? Keep it on or take it off?

GENTLE READER: Is the gentleman merely modeling the suit, with hopes of reselling it? If not, Miss Manners cannot imagine why he would display the manufacturer's name on his sleeve.

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)