Judith Martin
From Memorial Day to Labor Day, you may wear white shoes. Not before and not after. As a command, the White Shoe Edict should be clear and simple enough. Do not violate it. In a society in which everything else has become relative, a matter of how it makes you feel, a question between you and your conscience, and an opportunity for you to be really you, this is an absolute.Collection: Memorial Day
The rationale that etiquette should be eschewed because it fosters inequality does not ring true in a society that openly admits to a feverish interest in the comparative status-conveying qualities of sneakers. Manners are available to all, for free.Collection: Sneakers
Appearing to pay attention when someone is speaking is one of the cornerstones of real social interaction.Collection: Women
You do not have to do everything disagreeable that you have a right to doCollection: Disagreeable
A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful.Collection: Children
When politeness is used to show up other people, it is reclassified as rudeness. Thus it is technically impossible to be too polite.Collection: People
A small wedding is not necessarily one to which very few people are invited. It is one to which the person you are addressing is not invited.Collection: Wedding
The dinner table is the center for the teaching and practicing not just of table manners but of conversation, consideration, tolerance, family feeling, and just about all the other accomplishments of polite society except the minuet.Collection: Food
Most people who work at home find they do not have the benefit of receptionists who serve as personal guardsCollection: Home
Charming villains have always had a decided social advantage over well-meaning people who chew with their mouths open.Collection: People
One reason that the task of inventing manners is so difficult is that etiquette is folk custom, and people have emotional ties to the forms of their youth. That is why there is such hostility between generations in times of rapid change; their manners being different, each feels affronted by the other, taking even the most surface choices for challenges.Collection: Emotional