DEAR MISS MANNERS: Which is proper? To pick up the glass off the table and refill it, or leave it on the table and pour? I have always felt it to be unsanitary for a server who is clearing plates to touch someone's glass without having washed their hands since clearing other guests' dishes.

GENTLE READER: Life is full of risks, and although pouring while the glass is on the table is correct, the server could miss, pour ice water down your neck, and you might catch pneumonia.

Miss Manners has managed to lead a reasonably healthy life without worrying about the statistically insignificant dangers of everyday life, but she is aware that less reckless folks can find health threats in the most apparently innocuous customs.

She has often been told, for example, that leaving one's napkin on one's chair when temporarily absent from a meal has dire results, because other backsides may have previously sat on that chair. How the transfer of germs takes place -- on either end -- baffles her. It would have to be by direct contact, as whatever is in the air would already be doing its dirty work.

Do the diners return and stuff their napkins in their mouths? And that's just the more decorous side of the transfer.

As for the pouring of water -- wouldn't the server have to have his fingers in the glass? If it is only a matter of having touched the glass, what about the person who handled the glass when setting the table?

No doubt there are ways to get sick when coming in contact with almost everything and everybody, but Miss Manners would just as soon not be told about them.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Does the man need to lead the woman to the table when dining out?

GENTLE READER: And make her drink? Whoops, no, that was horses. Miss Manners apologizes.

A lady is properly led to a restaurant table by the gentleman accompanying her, unless a restaurant host does so, in which case the gentleman goes last.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have a dear friend who is married but still uses her middle name rather than her maiden name -- i.e., Eloise Adele Trumball, rather than Eloise Deaver Trumball. She swears she has never heard of this convention and that I must be making it up; her mother also doesn't follow the practice.

I realize I have to let this go; I can't force her to follow conventions she doesn't believe in. I would like to know where the practice comes from, however.

GENTLE READER: Your friend might better ask the origin of using the birth name as a middle name, as her name and her mother's followed the older convention.

The custom was for a lady to change her name upon marriage, not to add on to it. Miss Manners understands the wish of ladies to hold on to their original names as prompting their use as middle names, and often now not changing names at all. Yet the old-fashioned way also deserves respect, and no one should be subject to outside pressure on the choice.

(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'm a 27-year-old female, and I have difficulty meeting men (I rarely get to go out to bars/clubs, as most of my friends have children). On the rare occasion I do meet someone, something always goes wrong, and that gets me down.

A few times lately I've been asked, "Have you ever thought about having kids?" which I find pretty insensitive, because if I'd met the right man I probably would've had children. What's the best response without coming across as rude?

GENTLE READER: "It's not anything I'm thinking about doing tonight."

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I just received an invitation to a very formal wedding. There was no response card; we are expected to write our own note.

To me this is very cheap, and some people just won't respond. There was no "respond by" date, and we found out by word of mouth -- not on the invitation -- that it is a black-tie event. Who knew? Thank you for your response.

GENTLE READER: Wait -- you didn't send a response card. How do you expect Miss Manners to answer you?

Oddly enough, polite people who issued invitations always did expect the recipients to take the trouble of answering them, promptly and in their own handwriting. But polite people may have to deal with people like yourself, who are impolite enough to consider this expectation an outrageous imposition and ignore invitations, even those for events they plan to attend.

Stationers seized on the dismay of the hosts to suggest that the burden on recalcitrant guests could be eased if the hosts all but took over the job of answering the invitations, as well as issuing them. Thus, comparatively recently, the response card came into existence.

Whoever designed it had a peculiar idea of what constitutes formality. To this day, people are baffled by the "M" followed by a fill-in-the-blank, put off by the harshness of "will/will not attend," and inspired by the leeway that seems to be implied in "number attending."

More to the point, the response card did not solve the problem. In increasing numbers, prospective guests were not acknowledging invitations.

So the deadline was added, in the hope that it would signal that the need for a response was serious. Even that did not jolt those who lacked the sense and courtesy to respond. Miss Manners hears daily from frustrated hosts who cannot know how many guests they will have.

And now you have turned nasty because the crutches for guests, which you take as an entitlement, were not offered.

But yes, that invitation should have indicated "black tie" if that was what was intended. Once, it was assumed that evening clothes were required for a formal event in the evening, but even Miss Manners admits that this can no longer be taken for granted.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it inappropriate for a man to refer to a waitress as "Honey" or "Hon"?

GENTLE READER: Not if he is married to her.

(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 have moved to a new city, where a form of parenting seems to be particularly prevalent. One of my closest friends here just adopted a new baby, and was warned that when bottle-feeding her baby in public, she may be subjected to "well-meaning" strangers approaching her about the benefits of breast-feeding.

This hasn't happened to her yet, but I thought I'd ask you how to deal with this, as even the idea of it makes me furious. I can't think of a civilized response that comes close to the level of reaction warranted by such a situation.

I think if I were present and that were to happen, my instinct would be to throw my beverage in their face, perhaps with a "well-meaning" comment on the benefits of proper hydration.

GENTLE READER: Although Miss Manners thoroughly deplores the rudeness you describe, she feels that she must risk seeming equally intrusive by offering you another piece of advice about babies.

It is: Never start a street fight while you are holding one.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When I was invited to a dinner with an acquaintance, I expected a relatively short dinner with light and pleasant conversation, and accepted enthusiastically.

Instead, I was treated to a 2 1/2-hour exposition on how I need to fully reconsider my life and choices. She questioned me severely on such personal topics as my friendships and intimate relationships, my lack of social graces, my overly self-important opinion and my lack of self-knowledge, providing "advice" for each topic.

This included her statement that I do not know how to conduct myself in society, and that my current relationship with a young gentleman is "invalid."

I attempted to end the conversation several times, but she took this behavior as my not giving her my full attention and respect.

At the end of the dinner, she explained what a terrible conversation partner I had been for not asking her questions about herself.

In fact, I was so taken aback at her questions that I could not find a way to continue the conversation. I would normally reciprocate a question nearly verbatim, but I would not want to ask such rude or personal "questions" myself. I would hate to think that such behavior would ever be appropriate, particularly from someone I do not consider a close friend.

Please let me know if I am incorrect in this thought. I have considered what I ought to have asked in response, but I have not been able to find just the right phrasing.

GENTLE READER: It is not that long since Miss Manners heard from someone who planned just such a dinnertime attack. She doesn't know which makes her feel worse: that her attempts to head off such a travesty of hospitality failed, or that there are two such people as your acquaintance.

There is, indeed, something you should have said when this tirade began: "Goodbye."

(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.)