What are polite table manners?
Norberto Crooks
2025-07-15 20:51:57
Count answers
: 12
If you sit up straight, chew with your mouth closed, serve other diners, resist bolting your food and manage to talk civilly to your neighbour as well as eating, you will certainly pass muster. The main aim is not to look greedy or voracious, and any small errors in relation to the more arcane rules of cutlery-wielding, salt-shaking, bread-buttering, and fingerbowl-dipping will be overlooked because your demeanour is civilised and courteous. Sit up straight, sit square with hands in the lap and do not fidget. Do not put elbows on the table. Assist fellow diners by making sure others have been offered anything they might want from the table, such as butter, water, salt or pepper. Never eat with your mouth open or talk with your mouth full, however, it is fine to carry on eating during a conversation. Chewing food thoroughly, keeping the mouth closed as you do so, slows things down to a more civilised pace when eating with others. Try to avoid making noises of any kind while eating, either with implements against the plate or teeth, or with the actual ingestion of the food, such as slurping soup. Express appreciation when the food first arrives but do so politely, and when refusing a second portion, avoid big gestures and decline politely.
Read also
- How do you teach table manners?
- How should a child behave at table?
- How table manners became polite?
- What are 6 rules on manners at the table?
- What is the etiquette for tables in the UK?
- What are some don'ts for table manners?
- How to improve children's table manners?
- Do and don'ts table manners?
- What are the five 5 basic manners?