"A Villard Books trade paperback original"--T.p. verso.

Originally published: U.K. : Fourth Estate, 2005.

Your friends neglect to RSVP to your party invitation . . . co-workers munch their pungent meals near your office . . . pedestrians shout into their cell phones and practically knock you to the pavement. Wishing that friends, family, colleagues, and oblivious strangers would mind their manners is lovely, but what about your own? You don't mean to be rude, but in todays carefree, high-tech, fast-paced world, how are you supposed to know what to do? Thankfully, Englishman Thomas Blaikies witty and insightful guide will help you steer through this minefield of uncertainty and back onto the path toward civility without a lot of fuss and bother. No need to worry about the proper way to eat soup or which is the salad fork. What Blaikie teaches you is more important: how and when to drop in on a friend, how to turn down suitors graciously, how to move on at a party, how to end a text-message conversation thats gone on just a bit too long, and how to cope with myriad other twenty-first-century social traumas.