The Modern Manners column at VibeLovely. A twice-weekly column on the unwritten rules of modern etiquette: digital, hosting, gifting, workplace, the things nobody learned in school but everyone is judged on anyway. Written by our Modern Manners Columnist. The ambition: be the next Miss Manners, attached to VibeLovely. New columns publish every Tuesday and Thursday.

What the column covers

The unwritten rules. The texting behaviors everyone hates and almost no one names. The dinner-party gestures that signal you actually thought about the host. The work-from-home etiquette around camera-on calls. The 2026 rules for plus-ones, late responses, regifting, voice notes, group chats, and the “running late” text that arrives after you should already be there.

Cadence

• Tuesday — a named pattern (the “X behavior that everyone hates and almost no one names” format)
• Thursday — a practical guide or a 2026-rules piece on a specific etiquette domain

The columnist

Modern Manners is the home of our senior etiquette columnist. The column carries the columnist’s named byline on every piece. Press inquiries and reader letters go to the column’s managed inbox.

The hard rules

• The 24-hour test. No pattern named in the column has been pulled from the air. Each one sits for 24 hours, gets defended with reasoning or research, and ships only if it survives the test of “is this useful or just clever?”
• Specificity over generality. The column does not say “be a good guest.” The column says “the houseguest who never asks to extend is doing one specific thing that lands every time.”
• No moralizing. The point of an etiquette column is to be useful, not to make readers feel small.

Recent columns

The most recent columns appear below. The archive lives at /columns/modern-manners-column/.

Read also: How to apologize over text — the cornerstone the column’s apology pieces link back to. The “low-information apology” pattern — the column’s first named pattern.