Americans have always been a bit uneasy about manners. It has been presumed that in contrast to Old World artificiality, the citizens of the New World were, and should remain, sincere and straightforward. At the same time, in a highly mobile society newly successful Americans must often learn quickly how to do a great many things their parents were in no position to teach them. One result is that manners frequently change very rapidly, and books of etiquette have sold remarkably well in the U.S.

That has been especially so in the past two decades, as this week's cover story on new American manners points out. One popular up-to-date guidebook to shifts in manners since World War II, and particularly since the sexual revolution of the '60s, is The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette, which has just been revised by former White House Social Secretary Letitia Baldrige. To prepare the cover story, Reporter-Researcher Georgia Harbison interviewed Baldrige and found her "warm, graceful and witty, with manners so good you don't notice them." The cover assignment, however, made Harbison so acutely aware of social minutiae that she was "shocked to find my teenage daughter didn't seem to know the difference between a salad fork and a dinner fork. Worse yet, she didn't care."

Senior Writer Lance Morrow, who, as one of the magazine's essayists, has offered views on such matters as social kissing (to be done sparingly) and necktie wearing (to be avoided, if possible), welcomes most of the new manners. He displays an admirable generosity of spirit in allowing women to pick up lunch checks. "I was also delighted," says Morrow, "to give up the little hopping stutter-step necessary to place me on the curbside when walking down the sidewalk with a woman. But I haven't quite abandoned the habit of holding a woman's chair. What I do is place one hand on the back of the chair and then fall into a sort of abstracted trance until the woman is seated, as if I were not entirely responsible for my actions."

Though Morrow considers his own manners an irreproachable model of civility, he admits certain doubts about politesse between the sexes. For example, he exercises special caution at the entrance of his apartment building. "The doors there are quite heavy, and I hold them open for anyone following me, male or female. There are still some women, however, who feel no obligation to hold those doors for me, and so they let them swing back and whack me in the face."

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