MISS MANNERS WARNS: DON'T BE WIRELESS AND TACTLESS

By JUDITH MARTIN

Like a parent whose toddler is wobbling eagerly toward a wedding cake, etiquette can move fast when it has to. People think they can get away with using their cellular telephones at any time or place they choose, confident that etiquette is too befuddled by this wondrous novelty to set limits.

They are dangerously mistaken.

Perhaps there was a two-minute lag between the purchase of the first cell phone and the establishment of etiquette rules against using the device at the dinner table, taking calls while attending a concert, or making calls from a pew during religious services. But that was only because it was hard to believe that anyone would try. Nobody doubts this any longer. Yet these situations are already covered by the broader mandates of manners that have always applied. Annoying people by making disruptive noises has been on that list since the human body first learned to make nasty sounds on purpose.

Using a telephone to increase the range in which one can be rude isn't new either. Think what the telephone has already done for the invasion of peace and privacy. For years it has tyrannized people's lives with the premise that its jangling summons requires them to drop whatever they are doing and attend to it immediately. And they do. Lovers leave sweethearts with their outstretched arms and business people leave customers with their outstretched wallets.

We've all heard the standard excuses for the rude use of cell phones: attending to business and being available for personal emergencies. But these have been so overused and misused as to be hardly acceptable anyway. People who are on call for work or personal crises probably shouldn't be out socializing or entertaining themselves, and they certainly shouldn't be disrupting these activities for the less burdened.

However, the accusations of rudeness being made against the owners of cellular telephones are often unfair. "They're just showing off," is the charge hurled at people who use their cell phones to do what everybody else is legitimately doing--talking on the bus, making calls from the sidewalk, chatting while driving a car. An expensive telephone might be considered a status symbol--but so are a lot of other things that are less obviously useful yet don't arouse public ire. It should be recognized that the cell phone is just a tool. What determines rudeness is how it is used. People who need to shout into their cell phone probably just need a better phone, but shouting itself is already an etiquette violation.

There is a truly new etiquette rule on the books, especially for mobile phones, although even it has a historic precedent. In the old postal system, which charged the recipient rather than the sender, the polite letter writer was supposed to be reasonably sure the communication would be welcome and to compress the missive so as to keep the cost down. Now the polite telephoner is obligated to restrict the number and length of calls to mobile users, knowing the recipient incurs costs.

If there's anything ruder than disturbing people, it's making them pay for being disturbed.

The always polite Judith Martin is a syndicated columnist and the author of Miss Manners' Basic Training: Communication (Crown).