Miss Manners

Judith Martin
Judith Martin in 2005
Born	(1938-09-13) September 13, 1938 (age 78) Washington, DC, U.S.
Occupation	Journalist
Alma mater	Wellesley College

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

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

Since 1978, she has written an advice column, which is distributed three times a week by Universal Uclick 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 admonishing tone and sarcasm as well as their 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.”