Customer Reviews

Miss Manners: A Citizen's Guide to Civility

It is not an accident that the words "civility" and "politeness" derive respectively from the Latin and Greek words for "city." Wherever people live together, there is a need for a basic level of mutual respect to grease the wheels of our interaction and to remind us to keep our impulses under control for the sake of our common good.

Thus treating one another with respect, says Miss Manners (Judith Martin), is the heart of _manners_, and the conventions by which we do so are the rules of _etiquette_. Manners have therefore traditionally been accorded a place alongside morals, and etiquette alongside ethics.

Etiquette has no coercive "enforcement mechanism" but depends solely on (private and public) shows of disapproval: a raised eyebrow, a sharp word, even boycotts, shunning, and ostracism. When it falls into disrepute and bad manners run rampant, there is a grave danger that mutual respect will be enforced more coercively and less flexibly -- by law.

Miss Manners deplores this prospect; good manners are too context-dependent for the law to manage them properly, and at any rate jail time seems a harsh punishment for at least some of the milder breaches of etiquette. Thus her task: to restore good manners to their proper place in society and make etiquette the _first_ line of defense against incivility. (Libertarians should be cheering.)

And for those who think etiquette mainly concerns which fork to use, Miss Manners settles _that_ question very early on: there will never be more than three forks on the table at any time (any others will be brought with the courses for which they are required); you should always use the one furthest to the left; hold it as you would a pencil.

There, that was easy, wasn't it? Now you can read the book for its real content :-).