Offer cocktails, mail your invitations and insist on ‘holstered’ phones. Our modern guide to manners.

Preface to the First Edition “Emily Post clearly demonstrates,” reads an introductory note on the back cover of her eponymous guide to manners, “that etiquette is not a rigid set of rules but a code of conduct which turns everyday living into an elegant w

The requisites for a perfect formal dinner in 2018, whether a great one for 200 acquaintances kept in contact over social media (and mostly cultivated as exaggerated confidants) or a little one for eight exclusive flesh-andblood friends, are as follows:

Guests who can be relied upon to be courteous and congenial to one another for the duration of the engagement – even if they are liable to subtweet one another after their final cocktails; good food, a menu appropriate to the occasion and impressive enough aesthetically to encourage guests to post flattering photos of the effort to Instagram; table furnishings suitable to the occasion and in the very least not made of plastic; service roughly the level of a medium-quality restaurant or bar; and cordial, hospitable hosts, whose confidence in the success of the evening are in evidence at all times.

These requirements remain largely inflexible no matter the scale or consequence of the kind of dinner desired, but the necessity for brow-sweating, budget-obliterating perfection tends to increase in proportion to the formality and the supposed importance of the occasion.

A perfect dinner needn’t be truly formal, which of course cannot be given without the devout assistance of a battery of professional servants. It goes without saying that, should the host or hostess be obliged at any moment to rise from the table to perform even a minor function of service, the dinner descends at once to the comparative free-for-all of informality.

Expert Service

Emily Post, writing in 1922, most seriously advises that a dinner party requires “expert dining-room servants and enough of them.”

Supposing the reader isn’t inordinately wealthy nor living in an old-world European manor, this advice most likely won’t do. An absence of butlers, valets, kitchen maids and other long-customary full-time service staff in the home or on retainer needn’t prevent you from entertaining formally should the desire to impress be aroused. The host or hostess who aspires to the traditionally formal may instead simply hire the necessary help on a temporary basis, or else, in desperation, avail herself of the cooperation of her more generous friends and family, whose assistance in the kitchen and in the dining room has the further advantage of being unremunerated.

Selecting Your Guests

The judicious selection of guests is essential to all attempts at formal entertaining, the same as it was a century ago. It is a mistake, for instance, to invite too many loquacious wags to the same gathering, for they will only end up competing with one another for the attention and affection of listeners in meagre supply; two silent people, similarly, ought to be seated at least a natural conversationalist apart, lest a social vacuum open up and drain the energy from the room.

No less important are considerations of optics: and these considerations are decidedly contemporary. If your guests are liable to document the evening on social media, a good host or hostess must consider who among their followers may feel the pique of envy at having not themselves been invited. The goal should be to arouse avid tempests of jealousy in anyone you feel has rebuffed you recently, to make them feel remiss at having doubted your social standing, while evading the notice (and attendant upset) of anyone less consequential whose invitations you’d still care to receive going forward.

At the minimum the sensible host or hostess will take care to invite at least a handful of guests with both the inclination to share photos of the night that will flatter your taste and the audience to properly appreciate them.

The Importance of Invitations

An invitation to a formal party may be written by hand and delivered by mail (as dictated by tradition) so long as one prepares for the gesture to be received as eye-rollingly flamboyant. Then, too, there is the matter of time to consider: invitations posted by mail can hardly be relied upon to arrive quickly enough to satisfy the demands of planning, and, as manners require that an invitation by mail be answered by return mail, it could be literally weeks before the ambitiously traditional host or hostess actually hears whether their invited guests plan to attend.

Safer and more efficient are invitations issued by email. Keep the language simple, the directions clear and the list of recipients blind carbon-copied. A good host or hostess never creates a Facebook event page for an engagement of any seriousness.

Only debilitating illness or catastrophic act of god excuses the breaking of a formal engagement. The hopelessly vague reason for lastminute cancellation most fashionable of late – the insistence that one is “crazy busy” with work – is a sign of bad manners and cause for refusing to extend invitations to events in the future. Likewise, there is no such thing in polite society as “maybe attending,” despite how eagerly social media would have one adopt the norm. Accept or politely decline; don’t dither.

As always, the rule remains: do not accept an invitation you don’t care about in the first place. Once committed, see it through.

If a guest does happen to bail on a legitimate pretence in the final hours, the host or hostess may endeavour to replace the absent body with a more reliable acquaintance by phone or text message. An explanation is not necessary, and good manners require the acquaintance if at all possible to accept. Proper dress Few occasions among friends demand Black Tie or White Tie dress, and even, lately, the bid for Formal or Semi-Formal dress are rare. But the evening party ought to be regarded by guest and host alike as an occasion for elegance and style.

Women should dress neat, tailored and chic; men, while jeans are acceptable, should in the least wear a suit jacket and button-down shirt. The guest who arrives displaying no special effort or consideration of sartorial custom shows disrespect to the host or hostess and fellow guests. (It is meanwhile the duty of the host and hostess to set the bar for dress by wearing what they would to, say, a high-end restaurant.) This is perhaps the simplest manner in which we might restore some dignity and panache to modern entertainment. And dressing well is fun, besides. Cocktail service Guests, upon arriving, should be offered one among many styles of common cocktail, prepared in the kitchen in advance and kept chilled. A pitcher of ice-cold martinis has the distinct asset of being tremendously easy to concoct (requiring little more than emptying a bottle of refrigerated gin into a suitable receptacle cut with a few ounces of vermouth) and, better still, dazzling to guests who as a rule don’t expect much more than a lukewarm can of Pabst or a reminder that the invitation said “BYOB.” The practice of furnishing one’s own party with alcohol, rather than deferring to the guests to bring their own, has for so long been out of fashion that the host or hostess who accepts the outlay and buys a few bottles of hard liquor will be rewarded with the gratitude of their entire party.

Add to the martini an option for a classic alternative, such as the Manhattan or the Old Fashioned, and any guest accustomed to drinking nothing more complicated than rye-andgingers will be well and duly wonderstruck all evening long. The Manners of a Host/Hostess A good host or hostess must show each of their guests, from the lowliest stranger to the dearest friend, equal and impartial attention, so that each in turn feels generously complimented and rightly honoured to be among those present. They must appear to be unilaterally engrossed in the conversation being directed their way at any juncture, and at the same time, invisibly attuned to problems of detail that may arise over the course of the night.

It is imperative that while the host or hostess remains entirely aware of all matters that require their attention, such as drinks in urgent need of replenishing or wine spilled by a careless guest on the floor, that they not seem overtly fastidious or too concerned with such trivialities at the expense of their own pleasure. Guests will not feel able to relax and enjoy themselves if their host or hostess seems visibly stressed. The Guests Arrive “On all occasions of formality, at a dinner as well as at a ball, the hostess stands near the door of her drawing-room,” Ms. Post writes in 1922. “As guests are announced, she greets them with a smile and a handshake and a says something pleasant to each.” From here we move into the kitchen, and dinner: “It is the duty of the butler to count heads so that it may be known when the company has arrived. As soon as he has announced the last person, he notifies the cook. The cook being ready, the butler, having glanced into the dining-room to see that windows have been closed and the candles on the table lighted, enters the drawing-room, approaches the hostess, bows, and says quietly, ‘Dinner is served.’”

As the modern host or hostess is unlikely to have a cook in the kitchen, or a butler to count heads, or perhaps even a drawing-room from which to receive guests, and as arriving guests no longer tend to be announced by the staff greeting them at the door, but instead simply knock themselves or ask to be buzzed in, there isn’t much the good host or hostess can do today to welcome people to their home properly.

The chief role now becomes one of shepherding: it is the duty of the host or hostess to politely whisk arriving guests into the living room and to introduce them around. (See “Introductions” below.) Crucially, they must ward off the sort of clustering and drifting that tends to settle in early now – they must be watchful especially of those small groups inexplicably intent on setting up camp in the kitchen. The Late Guest For engagements in which dinner is to be served, the host or hostess should wait no more than 20 minutes after the time listed on the invitation before those guests present are seated and dinner service is begun. Upon entering the dining room at last the belated guest must apologize for their error and the host or hostess must make a conciliatory remark which excuses the mistake – it is more important that a cordial air be maintained than a tardy arrival be reprimanded. The habitually late attendee shows want of consideration and ought to expect fewer invitations in future.

For parties without dinner or with dinner served as hors d’oeuvres, the time printed on the invitation will as a rule be taken less literally. The current trend, however, of taking the hour listed to mean something like three hours hence has been grossly overpopularized. An invitation which encourages guests to arrive at 8 o’clock does not mean one should plan to arrive at 10:30. Such tardiness makes it considerably more difficult for the host and hostess to plan for the distribution of food and drink, to make introductions to guests who do not know one another, and adds pointlessly to their anxiety about rejection. A gentleman or lady always takes even “fashionably late” to mean no later than one hour after the time proposed by the invitation. Etiquette of Gloves and Phone Ms. Post advises that “ladies always wear gloves to formal dinners and take them off at table,” and indeed that it is “hideous to leave them on the arm, merely turning back the hands.” (One’s fan, too, is “supposed to be laid across the lap.”)

She does not mean the kind of wooly winterproofing mittens one is likely to see on the hands of arriving guests in winter today: those are, as you might expect, to be taken off at the door and left inside a coat.

There remains, however, a comparable item whose obstinate presence at the dinner table is similarly hideous. It is the cell phone. Guests ought to leave their phones holstered, pursed or pocketed for the duration of the meal at a dinner, and for as long as possible at more casual parties. Exceptions may be made for photos so long as they are taken quickly and with discretion. Enemies Must Bury Hatchets It is inexorable rule of etiquette that one must act with civility and grace toward all guests at an engagement to which one has been invited, no matter what one’s feelings are toward certain members of the crowd. At dinner, the men and women to your left and right cannot be ignored or paid too little attention, even if one of the two rubs you the wrong way or has on some earlier occasion caused you offence. At a party without seating, it won’t do to float around the affair on the opposite side of the room as someone you wish you to avoid, as even with the greatest effort of discretion the hostility will become obvious to everyone by the end of the night.

Out of consideration for those hosting, who would naturally be disturbed to feel they had put their guests in an uncomfortable position and will feel anxious over the prospect of conflict for the remainder of the evening, guests with a preexisting mutual aversion must tacitly agree to overlook their history of strife for the duration of the party. They needn’t pretend to be old friends, but they must endeavour to affect mild conviviality. The Importance of Good Music As late as 1965, when Elizabeth Post had taken over for her grandmother and written a revised edition of the Etiquette guide, it was recommended of a prospective hostess that for evening engagements she “hire the best orchestra obtainable.” Should she instead “plan to use a phonograph,” she ought to “choose records specifically intended for dancing and ones that will appeal to your guests.”

The phonograph might survive in hipper quarters. The orchestra, in virtually all cases imaginable, will not. Nevertheless, good music remains essential to the success of all entertaining. Music should, therefore, be a matter of serious consideration, both in terms of logistics (on what device will the music be played, from what source, and how loudly) and curation (what music will do for what part of the evening and for what crowd).

As concerns the former, the good host or hostess will know that a party is not the appropriate occasion to be fussing with a record player and the constant need to choose LPs and switch sides; for similar reasons, selecting albums to stream over Apple Music or Spotify one at a time shows poor foresight. The good host or hostess will spend however long it takes to assemble a playlist of appropriate music that spans more than the length of time they expect their guests to stay, or commission a friend with knowledge and taste in this area to assemble one on their behalf.

As to style, be sure to choose something that will rouse and delight your guests but not distract them so much that they will concentrate their attention on the music entirely. The object is to facilitate rather than impede the flow of lively conversation. For those without much discernment in the field of music, any selection of modal jazz from the 1960s is ideal for dinners and the early part of a social evening. Introductions At a small gathering, it is polite to introduce unfamiliar newcomers to each member of the party by name, one by one. This custom has lapsed into quaint obscurity in recent years – it’s perfectly common today for several attendees of the same function to leave at the end of the night having neither heard the names of or exchanged words with one another, as familiar friends lapse into small clusters within a party and admit nobody new – but it should be considered the very purpose of a dinner or party for people to meet and get to know others. At a large party the host or hostess is obliged only to introduce newcomers to two or three guests before leaving them to find their way from there. Serving Drinks Throughout Wine may be served with dinner: one wine per course, beginning with a dry white and moving steadily toward a heavy red such as a claret or burgundy. For the frugal, remember that most guests will prefer two glasses of mediocre wine to one glass of something better, so (with limitations) choose quantity over quality. The one exception is champagne, which on occasions such as New Year’s Eve is both necessary and worth indulging a splurge.

After dinner, or in lieu of it, curb proper cocktail service when the batches of long drinks prepared in advance have been exhausted; though martinis and Manhattans will prove impressive at the outset of a party, the time obliged to spend making them again and again will severely impede a host or hostess’ ability to facilitate conversation and keep on top of other matters that require attention. Switch instead mid-evening to highballs and encourage guests to pour themselves whiskies and gin on the rocks. When a guest is spotted with an empty glass, ask whether it can be replenished, but never ask twice.

Guests should of course be mindful of their intake and fortitude. Cocktails may stoke the flames of charm and good humour, but neither a lady nor a gentleman should be seen quite drunk. Overstayed Welcomes A party’s most enthusiastic guests will tend to willfully ignore evidence that the evening has begun to wind down, in a bid to keep the revelry going a little longer than the hosts or majority of their fellow attendees wish. It is poor manners for a good host or hostess to actively ask their guests to depart or to suggest even delicately that they are tired or have an early morning the next day: nothing sours a pleasant evening more quickly than a call to hurry out the door. But should the festivities continue into an unreasonable hour, the simplest solution is to quietly return the liquor to the freezer or cupboard and “close” the bar. The Overnight Guest It is inevitable that in cases of extreme merrymaking, at least one guest among a sizable party will reveal an inability to make their own way home at the end of the night, either because transportation options are limited (subway service has ended, they are too far to cab), or because they have driven themselves and have enjoyed too many libations to drive again.

In this case a spare bedroom may be prevailed upon or a couch made up for accommodation. Any guest should remember – if not in the throes of inebriation than the first thing upon waking into sobriety – that their presence is an imposition. Observe as best as possible the schedule of the household and leave as quickly and quietly as can be managed, however overwhelming the morning hangover. And Finally ... Of course, nobody likes to have commands prescribed to them from on high. With that in mind this guide is not prescriptive. Emily Post said herself that the precepts of etiquette “must be so thoroughly absorbed as to make their observance a matter of instinct rather than of conscious obedience” – that, in short, it is good manners to know one’s manners rather than to follow the letter of a law.