DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a single man who inherited, from my parents and grandparents, both a love of entertaining and also a great deal of the trappings needed — china, crystal, linen, silver — that ...

I, like you, was raised to be polite. “Ma’am” and “sir” were my normal ways of addressing people. It has been difficult to shift how I talk to people, but I have done so, not because I don’t want to ...