Judith Martin (née Perlman, born September 13, 1938), better known by the pen name Miss Manners, is an American journalist, author, and etiquette authority.

Since 1978 she has written an advice column, which is distributed three times a week by United Features Syndicate and carried in more than 200 newspapers worldwide. In the column, she answers etiquette questions contributed by her readers and writes short essays on problems of manners, or clarifies the essential qualities of politeness.

Judith Martin writes about the ideas and intentions underpinning seemingly simple rules, providing a complex and advanced perspective, which she refers to as "heavy etiquette theory". Her columns, noted for their wit, humor, depth of analysis, and broad knowledge of history and customs and their applications to the problems of today, have been collected in a number of books. In her writings, Martin refers to herself in the third person, e.g. "Miss Manners hopes..."

In a 1995 interview by Virginia Shea, Miss Manners said,

"You can deny all you want that there is etiquette, and a lot of people do in everyday life. But if you behave in a way that offends the people you're trying to deal with, they will stop dealing with you...There are plenty of people who say, 'We don't care about etiquette, but we can't stand the way so-and-so behaves, and we don't want him around!' Etiquette doesn't have the great sanctions that the law has. But the main sanction we do have is in not dealing with these people and isolating them because their behavior is unbearable."

Before she began the advice column, she was a journalist, covering social events at the White House and embassies, then became a theater and film critic. Martin is a graduate of Wellesley College. She lived in various foreign capitals as a child, as her father, a United Nations economist, was frequently transferred. She was born and spent a significant amount of her childhood in Washington, D.C., graduating from Georgetown Day School. She still lives and works in the nation's capital.

Martin was the recipient of a 2005 National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush.

On March 23, 2006, she was a special guest correspondent on The Colbert Report, giving her analysis of the manners with which the White House Press Corps spoke to the President.

Some of Martin's writings were collected and set to music by Dominick Argento in his song cycle Miss Manners on Music.[1]

Martin is known among Star Wars fans for her less-than-adulatory review of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, which she referred to as a "good junk movie" with "no plot structure, no character...development, no...original vision of the future" ^[1].

Ladies' Rights

In the glorious names of etiquette and of feminism, a great deal of disreputable advice is being given out these days to people of Miss Manners' own gender. Ladies are being taught ruses and tricks to perform when they are in public places so as to create the impression that they are respectable. They are advised in detail of ways of dressing and behaving in restaurants, hotels, airplanes, trains, and business establishments so as to discourage unsolicited attention. There seems to be no end of answers to the presumed question: How can I prove that I am honest while I am out pursuing my normal business?

Miss Manners is deeply outraged at the premise of the question. She wants it clearly stated that a lady is presumed to be respectable unless proven otherwise. The burden of proof is not on the lady. If there are some who are eager to devote special attention to protecting womanhood from the transgressions of men who are not gentlemen, let them do it by restricting the men, and not their victims.

We have sadly regressed on this point in the last century or so. Back when all men felt that they had the right to oppress women, individual gentlemen did not permit the less well behaved of their gender to insult individual ladies in public. Ladies themselves were quick to take offense at the hint of such unpardonable behavior and to make their objections loud and clear.

Here, then, are Miss Manners' answers to modern questions of etiquette that ought never to be asked:

How does a lady by herself check into a hotel? By stating her name and the fact of her reservation to the room clerk. If she is expecting her husband (anyone of the opposite gender occupying a hotel room with the person registering is, by definition, a spouse), she signs her own name and informs the clerk that she is registering for a double. It is not necessary to give the name of anyone other than the person responsible for the bill.

How does a lady eat dinner alone in a restaurant? By asking for a table, sitting down when a satisfactory one is shown, selecting food from the menu, ordering it, and, when it appears, eating it.

Suppose someone assumes that a lady wants to be picked up and starts annoying her? Any restaurant patron who is annoyed by any other patron should make an immediate, outraged complaint to the management. It is the restaurant's responsibility to see that indecent behavior, such as intruding on strangers in any way, is not permitted in the establishment.

Is it ever proper to address a lady traveling alone? Whether introductory-level personal conversation between strangers is considered insulting depends on the length of the trip. On a crosstown bus, it is; on an ocean liner, it is not. Avoiding socializing on the latter requires the same sort of polite maneuvers one would use on land to avoid those to whom one has been properly introduced but whom one doesn't like. Trains and airplanes are in between: It is not rude to attempt conversation, but it is not rude to cut it off, either.

Suppose a lady is staying in a hotel and wants to go out for a drink? Oh, suppose. Suppose Miss Manners would like a drink herself after all this. Then woe betide the person who tried to interpret this as behavior unbecoming to a perfect lady.

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