# Please settle this disagreement between me and my wife -- let's get between the sheets

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-settle-this-disagreement-between-me-and-my-wife-lets-get-between-the-sheets/999146>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [March 21, 2024, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-settle-this-disagreement-between-me-and-my-wife-lets-get-between-the-sheets/999146 "2024-03-21T14:48:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 78

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**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2024, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-settle-this-disagreement-between-me-and-my-wife-lets-get-between-the-sheets/999146/78 "2024-03-26T06:41:44Z")

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> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> > [@puzzlegal](#):
> >
> > Yeah, in fact, Miss Manners response to the toilet paper question was that the roll should face whichever way the person who replaced it preferred.
> 
> Miss Manners has definitely entered the 21st Century and maybe even the 2020s with that ruling.
> 
> OTOH, Emily Post remains mired in the 1890s, maaaybe 1910s. And proudly so.

Nah, it has never been the province of formal etiquette to rule on trivial private matters like that. [Emily Post’s 1922 Book of Etiquette](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14314/14314-h/14314-h.htm#Page_131), for example, specifies lavatory amenities for guests like providing fresh soap and hand towels, but not the orientation of the toilet paper.

And [Miss Manners was pointing out that toilet paper direction is not an etiquette issue as far back as 1987:](https://www.chicagotribune.com/1987/07/22/on-putting-the-napkin-and-the-daughter-in-law-in-its-place/)

> [@](#):
>
> Dear Miss Manners–I would like to know the proper way to put toilet tissue on the roll in the bathroom. If you have printed tissue, is the print supposed to be on the top of the roll or the bottom?
> 
> Gentle Reader–What in heaven`s name is the matter with this society?
> 
> Can`t anybody figure out anything anymore without appealing to poor overloaded experts? Miss Manners works hard attending to the propriety of all your encounters with other people. When you go into the bathroom, you`re on your own.

> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> As a wise Doper (I don’t recall who) said in another thread sorta adjacent to this one
> 
> > Manners is the art of making others feel welcome.  
> > Etiquette is the art of making others feel inferior.
> 
> That struck me as Wisdom for the Ages.

Hmmm, it strikes me as a shallow and artificial identification of “etiquette” with gratuitous snobbish snootiness.

Certainly, there are some people who claim the authority of “etiquette” (or “manners”, for that matter) merely as a justification for gratuitous snobbish snootiness, but that doesn’t mean that anybody else has to agree with them. Ultimately, etiquette systems are fundamentally about creating a reasonable set of standard default social conventions, so everybody can avoid feeling inferior.

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