DEAR MISS MANNERS: Who should receive a thank-you note for having attended a wake and/or a funeral?

GENTLE READER: As the person to whom respects are being paid is not in a position to write, no such letter is necessary. Miss Manners notes that the bereaved have quite enough to do in thanking those who have been kind to them by writing letters, bringing meals or otherwise being useful.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I invited a friend and her husband to dinner after my husband and I had been to a lovely dinner at their home. My note said how much we'd love to have them join us and, being aware that she is always exceptionally busy, I asked her to let us know what their availability was in the next couple of weeks so we would be able to find an agreeable date for the event.

I had expected a response something like "next week is filled, but we are free Wednesday and Friday the next." Several weeks went by and I received no response at all to this inquiry, and was a little perplexed because I heard from her on other matters via text, phone and email.

I then invited her to join me for lunch and she did respond, so we had a nice lunch at a restaurant. During the meal, I asked her if she'd gotten our invitation to dinner. She responded that she had received it but had not replied because my inquiry said, "let us know your availability in the next couple of weeks." She did not say it exactly, but the implication was that this was not a real invitation and so she chose not to respond.

Was I in error in my invitation? Should I have picked an exact date only to have her respond, as I know she would have, "Oh dear, we are busy on that date"? I was just trying to be considerate of their schedules and had hoped to avoid the endless back-and-forth of choosing dates that didn't work for her.

Shouldn't she at least have responded? I felt hurt that my invitation to come to dinner at my home didn't deserve even a simple phone call or email to say, "We'd love to come but would prefer that you pick the date." Now I don't really feel like inviting them at all. Your thoughts?

GENTLE READER: That your friend interpreted your invitation as the often used, "We must get together sometime," which is generally understood to mean "or maybe never." And that she did not feel obliged to hand over her entire date book.

Miss Manners realizes that you meant only to defer to your friend's schedule, but neither does she feel that the lack of response was intended as a snub. Please try again, volunteering your availability ("We would be delighted if you could come to us -- is the 18th or the 24th possible?") instead of asking for theirs.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My 25-year-old daughter seems to think that since this isn't her home, she shouldn't have to clean the house. Any part of it.

GENTLE READER: Ask her, then, where exactly her home is. And whether she would kindly let you stay there.

(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, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have been, in the past, a manager in retail stores and directly involved in the hiring process. When we did not hire an applicant, the decision was often left to me to send a letter or not.

I did not send letters every time, using the excuse of time as a constraint, and I now regret not taking the time to respond to everyone.

Now I'm on the other end, looking for work, and 90 percent of the time, I do not get any response from employers. That is very annoying; I don't even know if they got my application or if the position has been filled. Let me tell you, I have the utmost respect for the ones that do respond and will not hesitate to do business with them in the future.

The hiring manager's time is NOT more important than the applicant's time. People should respect that. Please, respond to every applicant.

GENTLE READER: And please learn the very most basic lesson of etiquette, one that might have saved you the regret that Miss Manners considers you to be quite properly feeling about your treatment of others.

It is that there are other people in the universe, and that their feelings must be taken into account.

We are each born with the idea that our feelings are the only ones that matter, and with any luck are indulged in this belief for -- oh, about six weeks, which is when our parents are dropping from exhaustion. Parents who attempt to sustain this are spelling their own doom and giving their children an enormous handicap in dealing with the rest of the world.

It is sad that you had to wait until you were unemployed to imagine how a job applicant must feel about being ignored.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it really proper for guests at a wedding to applaud at the conclusion of the ceremony?

I attended such a wedding, and I have seen televised ceremonies, and without exception, there was enthusiastic clapping of hands at every one. It offends me. I believed that a wedding was a solemn promise between loving people, and not a theatrical performance. Am I simply outdated?

GENTLE READER: Well, this has been going on for some time now -- a minor manifestation of the idea that everything, even a serious ceremony, is offered as entertainment and requires audience validation.

It is not that Miss Manners fails to appreciate guests showing enthusiastic support for the couple. There is ample opportunity at the reception. But she agrees that treating the ceremony (often styled as a bio-epic) as a show collecting "likes" is jarring.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: A friend who received an invitation to my birthday party for him and his wife then wrote to my husband, asking if we would also invite his female friend. We literally do not know what to say. She is an acquaintance, but no more, to us.

GENTLE READER: Did Miss Manners pick up a whiff of a suggestion that you think she is more to that husband? She hopes not. In any case, what you say is, "Oh, I'm so sorry, that's not possible, but we hope to see her on another occasion."

(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, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: We are American expats residing in France. Our home is bilingual: Our children speak to us in French, and we speak to them in English. It's now so automatic we don't even think about it.

Our neighbor's cousin visited us from the U.S., along with her daughter, who is our daughter's age.

While my daughter and the American girl were playing at our house, my daughter turned to me to ask me something -- I don't even recall what -- and I replied, upon which our young guest turned to me and asked (referring to my daughter), "What did she say?!"

I was taken aback and truthfully annoyed, so I replied, "I was talking to (my daughter)" and went to another room. Should I have handled it otherwise?

GENTLE READER: While you may not like the manner in which she asked, this young girl was presumably in France hoping to learn French. Asking for a translation was not unreasonable.

If the conversation was private, you should have taken pains to make it so. Or in a rare exception to the rule against holding private conversations in front of other people, replied back to your daughter in French to encourage the girl to learn. Then you could have said, nicely and with a smile, and in English, "We're hoping to encourage you to learn French and join the conversation."

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband and I got married last month. As we were making our rounds to each table of guests, we noticed that one of our friends "no-call no-showed." While we were surprised, we assumed something came up and didn't give it much more thought.

Then, later, we got an email from this friend saying she was sorry she could not attend, but that we should not have expected her to come without her husband.

Miss Manners, we invited this friend and her husband to the wedding. When we didn't receive an RSVP by the deadline, we followed up to ask if they had received their invitation. Our friend told us that she would attend, but that her husband would be away for work and could not make it. So, we reserved a seat for her and gave her husband's seat to someone else.

Four days before the wedding, our friend had called and said that her husband's trip had been canceled, and she asked if he could still come to the wedding. We told her that we were sorry, but we had given his seat away and we had no extra room. She said she understood and that she would see us at the wedding.

Were we in the wrong here? We don't want to lose these friends, but we're not sure how to respond to this email.

GENTLE READER: "We're so sorry for the confusion, but we were under the impression from our last conversation that you would be attending. We would have so loved to see you and Horatio, but trust that we will get another chance soon."

(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, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)