DEAR MISS MANNERS: One night, fairly late at evening, I acquired an extended, impassioned textual content from a stranger by mistake.
In it, he talked about having had a “wonderful few hours” with somebody and hoped to see them once more. He additionally revealed some private insecurities about their time collectively which can be, clearly, none of my enterprise.
I’m conscious that typically, to keep away from the difficulties of being sincere about how one feels, an individual might give a phony telephone quantity to somebody they don’t plan to see once more. On this case, it appears I used to be the unfortunate lotto quantity.
How can I deal with this in a manner that’s well mannered and spares the sender any embarrassment? Is it finest to answer to the textual content immediately and inform them, “I’m sorry, but you have the wrong number,” as we do on the telephone?
Or is the mortification I’d inflict on this individual — since they’d know I’d learn their personal message — an moral no-no, and it’s finest simply to delete the textual content and transfer on?
GENTLE READER: The everlasting query is: Would you reasonably know the reality, or would you not? And the irony is that most individuals would reasonably know, however then hen out when it’s their flip to do the precise confrontation.
Miss Manners suggests that you just inform the person who this was the flawed quantity. Allow them to draw their very own conclusions as to why. There may be at all times the prospect that they typed it flawed. Though we each know that it’s unlikely.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: I’ve a final identify that my household has pronounced a specific manner by the generations, and that almost all English audio system, trying on the identify, pronounce in a extra phonetic manner.
If any person asks me how I pronounce it, I inform them, but when any person goes forward and pronounces it the phonetic manner, I by no means right them — partly as a result of it appears a bit of impolite, however primarily as a result of I don’t care.
An previous pal, although, has realized that she’s been mispronouncing my identify for a number of a long time now. She instructed me I used to be impolite to not right her within the first place and spare her the embarrassment of “saying it wrong” all these years.
Ought to I preemptively right folks if I’m not bothered by what they’re saying?
GENTLE READER: Not caring is pretty much as good and refreshing a motive as Miss Manners has heard for not being impolite.
Nonetheless, for the sake of your friendship, you may inform your pal, “It never bothered me and frankly I am so used to hearing it the way you say it that it didn’t occur to me to correct you. But I certainly never wanted to be rude or make you feel bad. Please forgive me.”
Sooner or later, if it comes up in any other case in dialog, after all you could politely inform somebody the right pronunciation. To wit: “The English are so funny about their H’s. It’s actually properly pronounced Shufflebottom, not Shufflebotham, as it’s spelled.”
