Living: Mode Code

A new Ford manual

Manners makyth man, according to the ancient English axiom. However, it is woman who makyth manners, a behavioral frontier that has traditionally been too sensitive to be guarded by men. From Chaucer's Wife of Bath through Godey's Lady's Book, Emily Post, Amy Vanderbilt and Letitia Baldrige, the doyennes of decorum have defined and refined social norms to the point at which a boilermaker in Metropolis, Ill., knows (from his wife) that it is O.K. to eat bacon with his fingers, while french fries should be conveyed by a fork.

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