I Beg Your Pardon?
I, somewhat idiosyncratically, have used the phrase “pardon me” instead of “excuse me” for well over half my life. Reader’s Digest, in a recent article on etiquette, now tells me that it’s actually more polite to say “I beg your pardon” because that phrasing does not imply a command. But, although that preferred phrasing has the distinct benefit of sounding medieval and courtly (good things to an English-lit geek), the preferred phrasing also has so many more syllables and I’m lazy, which is causing me to continually revert to “pardon me”, or the even more cursory “pardon.”
I may just stick with “pardon” since it can be read either way, is short and gets the point across. But it still doesn’t seem quite right.
Maybe “beg pardon”?
Oh, pother, this is too hard. I think the tone I use is such that “pardon me” does not come across as command-like. And it certainly trumps the outright rude failure to say anything at all.
I wonder what else I do wrong in the world of proper etiquette? No, don’t tell me. I think I’d rather figure these out for myself.
I beg your pardon for even bothering you with this.