In response to Suzy’s letter about unwanted nicknames and your point about
spelling names right, I was wondering if you have any advice
about how to respond when people spell names wrong, especially in email.
I don’t have Suzy’s problem because my parents intentionally picked a name
without nicknames (not a bad decision in the scheme of things since it
spares me from Suzy’s problem), but my name gets spelled wrong right and
left. People who haven’t seen it written down have no reason to know how
to spell it and I have no problem spelling it for them, but that’s not the
case in email.

My name is an uncommon spelling of a fairly uncommon name. It’s common
enough that people recognize it, but not common enough that they know how
to spell it or know which spellings go with which gender. (The most
common misspelling I get is the wrong gender.) In person and occasionally
in writing, I get called somewhat related names, too, but I’m more
concerned about when they’ve got the right name with the wrong spelling.

There are plenty of clues when I send someone email: my first name is in
my email address and I sign practically every message I write. Despite
this, I often get responses like:

From: Person Who Ignores Spelling
To: Name (name@domain.com)

> —- Original Message from Name —-
> …
> Thanks,
> Name

Hi Naaem,
…

When it’s someone I barely know, I don’t really worry about it (though I
wonder if they were paying attention to anything else when they were
responding), but when it’s someone I see every day, I get annoyed. Is
there anything to do but live with it? I can’t think of any way to work
“Hey, but my name’s Name” into a response without looking snotty, since
it’s harder to strike the right tone in email. And I know typos happen,
but I feel like names should be double-checked, especially when you don’t
have to look further than my email address to get the right spelling. On
the other hand, maybe I’m just overly sensitive about it because I have to
spell my name for people so often.

Signed,
Sylvester Stallone Can’t Spell

Longtime reader, first-time writer. Time to don your Grammar Queen tiara.

I write regarding the capitalisation of acronyms. The new Guardian newspaper style guide states that acronyms should be spelled with the first letter capitalised and the remainder lowercase (Aids), but every other style guide I have consulted advises the more traditional uppercase (AIDS). I have seen the former in a few other publications, though — “Nato” is pretty common.

I far prefer the uppercase — in the example given I keep looking for the missing “e”! What do you think? Are we moving to acronyms themselves as proper nouns, instead of abbreviation?

Cheers,
Sometimes There Are Just Too Many Acronyms

I am long-time reader, first-time writer for advice. I would like your take on this “friendship.” John and I dated over fifteen years ago in a high-school romance. Despite a sort of shitty break-up on his part we became friends and remained friends for many years thereafter. We both settled (for awhile) in the same part of Texas, some eight or so hours from home and kept in touch. We had the same social circle in high school and for almost ten years after high school we would all get together around the holidays and have a few beers, et cetera. We had a yearly bowling party on Christmas night for many years.

Anyway, he eventually met a very nice woman and married her. I flew across the state (800 miles) for his wedding. He and his wife seemed happy to see me and my then boyfriend (future husband). Fast forward a couple of years — I am getting married about three hours from where John lives, in a city where he has many friends as I have hung out with all of them there over the years. I send a “save the date” card and email to people about six months before the wedding and send invitations eight weeks before. I received a gift from John and his wife. I sent a thank-you.

Two weeks before the wedding I have yet to receive a response from John and I email him and ask if he and his wife are coming to my wedding. He responds that they are not, that the weekend has just gotten too busy, that they have X thing to do and friends coming to stay with them. Frankly, it hurt my feelings quite a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I am not doing the tit for tat, no one is obligated to come to my wedding, it was more the nature of the response — it was clear they did not give a shit about my wedding and never planned to come and didn’t bother to tell me either. Honestly, that was the only decline that really bothered me. He clearly never seriously considered coming to the wedding and forgot about it until I asked him.

Fast forward another few years. I get a mass email from John announcing that he and his wife are having a baby. My feelings of animosity have softened somewhat so I reply and say congrats and give a little update on life. Well, the reply I get from him is nice to hear from you and is generally very sweet, but contains one phrase I cannot get over. “Since we announced we were having a baby, a bunch of people have come out of the WOODWORK.” The WOODWORK? WTF? So, I’m kind of pissed, but here’s the overall deal — John is a generally nice but clueless person when it comes to these subtleties. Or he has a big ego, but I tend to think the former. The wedding thing hurt my feelings, but I don’t think he meant to be rude. However, I am quite tempted to reply that I did not emerge from the woodwork, but that I deliberately was not in touch due to the fact that he never planned to attend my wedding and also never bothered to tell me that until I emailed and he told me he was too busy and I sort expected to hear from him in these intervening years.

To cut this saga short, what is your take? A) Reply with pleasantries and don’t mention the wedding stuff; B) reply and mention the woodwork and wedding stuff, or C) write his clueless ass off?

Very truly yours,
Trivial dilemma

I have finally come upon a situation in which I need you to tell me if I’m being a total fucked-up loony or if there isn’t some validity to my feelings.

Background: I am a 22-year-old girl who, since the age of 19, has lived on her own and supported herself working full-time in an accounting firm while also attending school full-time. It was a lot to take on and I’ve been pretty able to deal with the stress but sometimes people have bad days, right? I should also mention that I have had depression on and off pretty much since middle school, that I have anxiety attacks which sometimes result in me getting so nervous that I make myself sick and also some pretty bad self-esteem issues. I have sought counseling in the past for depression, went on meds for a while and got better but now all three of these things have combined into one uber-problem that has made life not that much fun for me to live for the last few months. But I didn’t realize it was going on for so long because for the past two months (well, since I graduated college) my friends and I have all been on one big drinking binge (I’ve been averaging 5-6 drinks a night, every night). Self-medicating anyone?

I’ve been putting on a happy face because God forbid if I’m not Mary Fucking Sunshine every day but for the last few (probably two) weeks I have not been the model of happiness. And that’s not to say I just go around sulking and being pissy but people are irking my nerves lately which does not put me in a “good” mood. Which is why I finally got on the horn and called my EAP and visited a counselor yesterday and am now set to go weekly. I’m down with that. I don’t want to feel this way anymore. It is not a fun feeling to have.

Through this all there is this girl who has been my best friend. I thought she understood everything about me. My phone phobia, my paranoia of white socks and that yes I have anxiety and sometimes some situations aren’t very fun for me. Maybe I should give you a little more background on her. I’ve known her since we were in sixth grade and pretty much throughout middle school and high school we hated each other. She was a big bitch to me and tried to exclude me from things and blah blah blah what-middle-school-girl-doesn’t-do-this-cakes. We ended up realizing we were pretty much the only people staying in our home town after high school so we ended up hanging out a lot and we realized we had a lot in common.

This girl is not very motivated in life. She lives on a futon in her parents’ living room. She was going to the university for two years but dropped out because she has no idea what she wants to with her life. That was two years ago. She works part-time but all her money goes to pot and the bars (not that I don’t spend my money on that either, but I make a good salary and can afford to). She has no savings, is constantly borrowing money from me (although she usually pays me back, it’s not until weeks later) and through it all complains how horrible her life is and how her parents are always on her case to do something with herself. While I agree with them and have told her so in the past, I’ve come to accept that she’s not going to do anything. I would suggest counseling but she doesn’t have health insurance because she only works part-time and can’t get it through her parents because she’s no longer a full-time student.

We’ve had ups and downs before and just recently (a few months ago) reconciled after a period of not talking to each other for about six months. Most of our fights result because I am anal-retentive about being on time and, well, she’s not. She’s always running at least half an hour late if not much more. I just think that’s utterly rude. It’s like saying your time is more important than anyone else’s. I can handle being five minutes late or even ten on occasion. Shit happens. But half an hour is extreme. It’s a result of piss-poor planning skills and not very cool.

She knows this about me. She knows how much it drives me nuts. I can accept the fact that she can’t get to places on time. I can accept the fact that we’re never going to get on the road when we say we are. What I cannot accept is that if we make plans at a specific time, but she in the meantime finds something else to do, I get put on the back burner until it’s convenient for her do whatever our plans are. I mean, isn’t that the point of making plans at a specific time? Otherwise, I wouldn’t make plans.

There are two specific issues which have happened that have gotten me particularily upset. One occurred on Saturday. I had the wedding of my boss’s daughter to attend and my friend originally agreed to go with me but then she ended up having to work. That’s fine and dandy. I told her I expected to be at the wedding until 8-ish and that I would call her when I was out. She told me specifically to call her at her house and that she would be there and then we were going to hang out and go to the bars. While at the wedding, my other friend C had called me and left me a voicemail so I gave him a jingle back. Come to find out he’s at this house that this one girl is dog-sitting at and my friend is there too. He’s like, do you want to talk to her? So she gets on the phone and she’s all you should come over here. Well, I didn’t really want to go over there because A) I don’t really like the girl that was dog-sitting and B) it’s not really her house and C) I’ve only met the girl one or two times and I wasn’t very comfortable around her and I just didn’t want to go and deal with being uncomfortable. So I try to tell my friend exactly this: that I don’t know some of the people well, it’s not really their house and I’m not in the mood. She’s all, well, you know three people (her, her brother, and said friend C). I said that wasn’t my point but whatever and that I would call her back.

I get to my apartment and chill for a bit and then call her back. Part of the problem was that I didn’t want to drive all the way to the other side of town, and I had previously asked if she would come pick me up and she bluntly said no. When I call her back, I ask how long she’s going to be there until. She says 9:30 because she has to go home and shower. By this time it’s 8:30 and there didn’t seem like much point to going over for an hour, which I tell her. She says, well, my brother will pick you up and bring you here, I’ll leave and go home and shower and then we can hang out here some more. What part of I don’t want to hang out over there didn’t she understand? So she’s trying to talk me into coming and she goes, well, don’t come if you’re going to be cranky. And that was the point I got pissed because this girl is the queen of crankiness and she cannot stand it when people call her on it but she does it to people all the time. I told her, look, you made plans with me, you found something else to do, I don’t want to do it, I’m a little upset about it and now you’re going to play the cranky card. She tells me she’s in front of a bunch of people and can’t get into this with me and she’ll call me when she’s done with her shower (which, by the way, ended up being around 11).

She calls and tells me she’s not going to apologize because she doesn’t think she did anything wrong (like hurt my feelings) and that’s just who she is and I have to accept it. She tells me I’m the only one who gets pissed about it and everyone has come to terms with that’s the way she is but me. I ask her if she realizes how selfish she sounds because she can’t take into consideration anyone’s feelings but her own. So whatever, we kind of talk it out, we go out later that night but I wasn’t in a good mood. We hang out again on Sunday and Monday and things are somewhat fine.

Enter yesterday. The week before she had made a hair appointment for me with her friend at 6:00. The hair place is in a different town about 30 minutes away. I have my appointment with my counselor at 3:00. On Monday night I tell her about my counselor appointment. She asks what time I’m getting back to town. I tell her 4:30. She tells me to call her and that we’ll hang out before we go down. I get back to town and call her. Surprise, surprise, she’s not home. I wasn’t pissed or anything. Her mom tells me she told her she would be home between 4:00 and 4:30 (it’s 4:20). I keep myself entertained while reading some stuff on your site.

5:00 rolls around. 5:15 rolls around. At 5:20 she calls, ten minutes before we have to be on the road to get there on time. She doesn’t ask me how I’m doing. She says this: I just got home from the lake. Come pick me up (at her house, which is close to ten minutes away from mine). She doesn’t ask. She orders. I say, so I’m driving? She says yes. I was like, well, can’t you come over to my place and I’ll drive from there (because it’s out of my way to pick her up)? She says no. I ask why not? She says because I’ve been drinking. And that was when I got utterly mad. Because not only did she blow off plans with me but she blew off plans with me to go drinking. At 5:00 on a Tuesday.

So since it’s her friend that is cutting my hair but she made the appointment under her name, I have no choice but to go pick her up. She dilly-dallies as I sit in the driveway. She gets in the car. I say hello. She says hi. And then silence for the whole half-hour car trip. She didn’t even ask how my day was. I get my haircut. She chit-chats with her friend and her friend had another opening so we stay and she gets her haircut. We leave. Silence on the way home.

She knows I’m pissed but won’t talk to me about it. I’m always the one who has to pick up the pieces of our friendship and I don’t want to do that anymore. I just drive back to my apartment get out of the car and walk into my house. She gets out and I presume walks home.

Am I way overreacting to this, Sars? Am I being some crazy psycho? Would you have gotten upset about shit like this? Where do I go from here?

The unfortunate side effect is our group of friends and where this puts them. We all hang out together as one happy bunch most of the time but this is going to throw a kink in it.

Your help is greatly appreciated. Put me in my place if you think I need it.

Annoyed that I’m the only one who thinks other people’s time is just as important as my own

I would appreciate your opinion about a slightly sticky wedding
etiquette issue. My fiance and I attended the same university (from
which I’ve just graduated), and have a lot of friends in common. In
fact, we were both really active in one large student group in
particular, and have a huge group of friends just from that activity.

The problem is that we can’t possibly invite them all to the wedding.
Our guest list is already too big, and we just don’t have room for
everyone. And, to be perfectly honest, there are a few people in that
college group of friends we just don’t particularly like, and we
certainly don’t plan to stretch the guest list to include them.

Unfortunately, one of those people emailed me a few days ago
regarding the wedding. I hadn’t discussed it with him, aside from the
unavoidable “Thanks so much — I’m so excited!” reply to his
congratulations on the engagement. I had hoped that once we graduated
and quit seeing each other on a casual basis, I would be able to avoid
the topic entirely. He’s rather pushy at times, and always “forgets”
to put in for his beers at the pub, and likes to hit on girls who
already have boyfriends (and fiances), among other things. But he
emailed me out of the blue to give me his address so that I would have
it for sending out wedding invitations. He also wanted to let me know
that he was looking forward to the wedding, and had planned his autumn
schedule accordingly.

The problem, of course, is that he isn’t invited. And I have no
idea how to respond.

Admittedly, I am from the South, and where I’m from people just
don’t do things like that. No one would dream of sending his address,
unsolicited, to the bride, or of presuming he was invited to the
wedding. But my fiance, who is from a colder climate, assures me that
people in his neck of the woods don’t often do so either, so I don’t
think that I’m just being too sensitive.

My fiance wants to ignore the email. He doesn’t think it deserves a
response, and so he doesn’t want to honor it with one. But I am torn,
because on one hand, I certainly don’t want to have to write the guy
and tell him he’s not invited. On the other, however, I feel bad for
the guy. His feelings will be hurt that we didn’t invite him, and it
seems kinder to let him know (in a very polite, “we’re so sorry, but
we weren’t able to invite all of our friends, but thanks so much for
thinking about us” sort of way) than to let him assume for the next
month that he’s invited (and maybe even plan around it), only to find
out when he doesn’t get an invite that he’s not. Plus, he could very
well email me again in a month to ask where the invite is.

So what do you think? How should we deal with this? Ignore it?
Respond in the negative? Cave in entirely to my passive-aggressive
nature and add him to the guest list, so I don’t have to deal with it
anymore?

Thanks so much,
Bewildered