Drawing upon her rich experience of life, Prudence (Prudie to her friends) responds to questions about manners, personal relations, politics, and other subjects. Please send your questions for publication to prudence@slate.com. Queries should not exceed 200 words in length. Please indicate how you wish your letter to be signed, preferably including your location.

Dear Prudie,

My wife and I, Manhattan residents sans country house, spent this past weekend with friends at their restored Pennsylvania farmhouse. On Monday morning I wanted to thank them, but when my fingers went instinctively to the e-mail "Send" button, I wondered if e-mail was socially correct for such purposes.

What are Prudie's thoughts on the evolution of e-mail and the social graces--assuming there is any connection?

--Polite but Puzzled

Dear Po,

Prudie supposes if you're Brooke Astor, e-mail might not cut it, but the handwritten bread and butter note is starting to seem like the whalebone corset, given the modern possibilities. Because snail mail is not always reliable, many people with social graces have substituted the fax, ensuring both timeliness and actual arrival. Since e-mail is even quicker and just as dependable as faxing, by all means feel at ease being electronically grateful. It is, after all, the thought that counts. (Prudie is assuming your hosts are wired.)

A good test for you to figure out your comfort level about this matter is to imagine how you would respond to receiving a thank-you note on the Net.

--Prudie, currently

Dear Prudence,