POLITE TELEPHONING.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 437, 20 February 1909, Page 11

POLITE TELEPHONING.

It was only a short time ago that in one of the largest' American' cities orders were issued to the. telephone girls to waste no more ', time in'saying "piease' y when they asked for a subscriber's number, and a minute calculation showed how many hundred .thousands of words a week' were; wasted in this siaall.unnecessary coiirt6sy. . ••• . ;V : : .The authorities .in. tondon, on the other' hand,.! h'ave now issued, a mandate that civility j and<'6yen courtesy;'' shall, be' displayed "by telephone;iind,postal officers... "Please J"/and "Thank you I", are" demanded^ -even in' the stress of' business. V Almost , simultaneously, ,says an Australian/paper, .we have our own 'educational authorities,* in. the course of a. summer holiday,. advocating; a, ■ system. ■; of ;

teaching phonetics that will take, from our young people, the quite justifiable-charge of speaking badly and indistinctly. At first ;sight, there may seem. to be little connection between these, two circumstances. .As a mat.ter of fact, there is a .very large one, especially where : womenare concerned. : Many - a woman'who is merely: inarticulate passes for rude. The thanks she mumbles when a man rises to make room for her in a railway carriage are hot even heard. A man—one of the countless victims to our absurd system of suburban railway; transport—says that after years of travelling he has .yet to find that arrogant dame or damsel who scorns to thank him and his kind for the little services attendant, in daily trips to and from town. Women shuffle through the opened door with as much, shyness as haste, and can hardly say "Thank you I" distinctly when their paraphernalia is stowed in the racks for them. The Anglo-Saxon wontan who can give thanks with the prettiness of any feminine member of thei&atin raceß is a rarity. Probably she .will alms bo a- rarity*