tiquette is what's right. A book of etiquette shouldn't begin by being wrong. In the introduction to ''21st-Century Etiquette,'' Charlotte Ford writes that rather than approach etiquette ''as a daunting set of uptight rules (and who really likes rules?). . . .''
I do. So does anyone who has experienced unruliness, misrule and whacks on the knuckles with a ruler for breaking rules he didn't know existed. Good society has clear rules because, otherwise, it would be the bad society of criminals, politicians, celebrities and Big Five accounting firms, where the rules are vague and shifty. To be accepted in good society one has to learn the rules. One doesn't have to get naked, famous, elected or jailed.
Ford goes from being wrong to being subtly wrong. ''The whole point of good manners,'' she says in Chapter 1, ''is to respect other people's comfort and privacy so that they may be at ease.'' Not exactly. Judith Martin, the best living writer on etiquette, says in the introduction to her book ''Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior'': ''If you are rude to your ex-husband's new wife at your daughter's wedding, you will make her feel smug. Comfortable. If you are charming and polite, you will make her feel uncomfortable. Which do you want to do?''
Ford tells a story about giving up her finger bowls ''when recently a guest picked up his finger bowl and drank from it.'' Martin tells a better story about the sacrifices of etiquette. Queen Victoria drank from her own finger bowl. ''She had to. Her guest of honor, the Shah of Persia, had done it first.'' There is an idea current that the purpose of etiquette (and of practically everything else) is to make us all feel good. The purpose of etiquette is to make us all be good (or act as if we were).
The rules are supposed to daunt (from the Latin domare, to tame). They would be useless if they were low, loose and flopping around, or whatever the opposite of uptight may be. A book of etiquette isn't a list of suggestions for being nice. ''21st-Century Etiquette'' is mostly that, and the type of suggestion is mostly this:
''If someone were to ask me to hand over my wallet, it would be a lot easier for me to give it up if he had a smile on his face.''
''If you find yourself the victim of the waiter who'd rather be playing Carnegie Hall than serving your meal, my suggestion is, 'Kill him with kindness.' ''
''If someone you loved took her life, the comfort of family and friends is an immediate necessity.''
If a little late.
A book of etiquette has a practical as well as a moral side. Etiquette keeps us from needing to invent the wheel when a groom is carted to a wedding, when a tea wagon is rolled into the drawing room and, indeed, when someone is driven to take her life. But here is Charlotte Ford's entire ''Wedding Invitations'' entry: ''Most wedding invitations include a reply card that should be responded to at your earliest convenience. However the old-fashioned method was reply card-deficient, and it is proper manners for the invitee to R.S.V.P. on their personal stationery.''
Compare this with the section on wedding invitations in Emily Post's magisterial ''Etiquette'' (be sure to get an edition published before 1960, while Post was still alive): 15 pages of sample forms and wording examples cover everything from ''The Bride Who Has No Parents'' to the announcement of private railroad cars to transport wedding guests. (Incidentally, Post says that a tea wagon is not ''in best taste for tea!'' but is ''excellent for cold drinks of all sorts.'')
Ford does devote a chapter to the etiquette of high-technology communications. The chapter includes some ''Expert Advice'' from Geraldine Laybourne, the C.E.O. of Oxygen Media. Laybourne -- who perhaps should check with people to whom she has spoken in person -- says, ''My natural sarcasm, readily understood in person, was misinterpreted through e-mail.'' Ford says, ''Do use 'emoticons' to indicate tone,'' to which my response can only be : ( : ( : (.
Ford says, ''Call waiting is a tricky one.'' It is not, it's interrupting. And all one needs to know about good manners with technology, however high, is contained under the heading ''Party-Line Courtesy'' in my 1945 edition of ''Etiquette'': ''If there is an emergency, you of course say 'Emergency!' in a loud voice, and then 'Our barn is on fire.' ''
Another function of an etiquette book is to be a guide for social climbing. Kim Izzo and Ceri Marsh, authors of ''The Fabulous Girl's Guide to Decorum,'' are well equipped with rope, pitons and carabiners. The first lines of their book are: ''Manners will make you fabulous. Manners are sexy. The well-mannered get invited to more dinner parties.'' The problem is that Izzo and Marsh don't have any manners.
''Entrance into society is an important phase for the Fabulous Girl,'' they claim. ''It involves the careful and wise selection of a new group of people that are different from the company she kept in high school and university.''
''Many women feel uncomfortable bragging,'' they report. ''Get over it.''
Don't use cellphones ''in restaurants, movie theaters, bookstores,'' they admonish, ''(unless the call is extremely brief and you excuse yourself).''
Nor do Izzo and Marsh seem to have any morals. ''Everyone either lies or embellishes on their resume: an FG'' -- Fabulous Girl -- does it with style.''
''There is one pervasive myth about the workplace that needs to be dispelled: Never sleep with your boss. This is propagated by those who have never known the pleasures of such an exciting affair.''
And under the subhead ''When to Move From Supper to Sex'': ''But if you want a more traditional courtship, then having at least one or two dates beforehand is the norm.''
In fact, Izzo and Marsh don't seem to have any sense. They suggest, ''If you have a friend who you suspect is struggling with her sexuality . . . matter-of-factly say, 'Have you ever thought of dating someone of the same sex for a change?' ''
''The Fabulous Girl's Guide'' is to social climbing what Dante's ''Inferno'' would be to salvation if Dante had chosen Petronius instead of Virgil as his docent in Hades: ''The eighth circle is tough to get into. We're talking hypocrites and evil counselors and I mean major players, not run-of-the-mill Sunday talk-show pundits. Fortunately, I got our names on the list.''
It shouldn't be forgotten that social climbing, like politesse and ceremonial conventions, is a good thing. Emily Post, who besides knowing where all the forks should go was one of the great moral philosophers of the 20th century, said, ''Best Society, Best People or People of Quality can all be defined as people of cultivation, courtesy, taste and kindness.'' This is a peak the whole world should ascend. Would it be tasteless and unkind to start an avalanche just above the Fabulous Girl?
As for the right kind of social climbing, Post probably would have been less surprised than I was to find two breathless young ladies, aged less than my patent leather dress pumps, who style themselves ''the Etiquette Grrls,'' at the tippy-top.
In ''Things You Need to Be Told,'' Lesley Carlin and Honore McDonough Ervin's repetition of the phrase ''Etiquette Grrls'' is irritating, As Is the Random Capitalization. From women who tell users of e-mail, ''The rules delineated in the Chicago Manual of Style apply to all Written Material,'' overuse of the small, annoying word ''wee'' is tiresome. But Carlin and Ervin are addressing the tiresomely young. Just how tiresomely young becomes clear in Chapter 3: ''First, one must wash. Every single day, preferably twice a day.'' And before I could dash off a note (in ink on good paper) to the Etiquette Grrls suggesting they consult Strunk and White, Chapter 5, Section 9, ''Do not affect a breezy manner,'' I found myself charmed. Maybe it's the way the Etiquette Grrls devote as much energy and enthusiasm to a thrift-store place setting as Post did to the Spode china and the heirloom silver. Or maybe it's the hint they give the neophyte hostess about dinner-party food: ''Yogurt is a slimy substance that is, to the best of the Etiquette Grrls' knowledge, a Revolting Mix of sour milk and bacteria enhanced with a Flashy Marketing Campaign.''
The advice of the Etiquette Grrls is to the point: ''In live theater, it is . . . unacceptable to attempt to speak to the actors, even though they can hear you.'' Their advice is peer-appropriate: ''Basically, you must conduct yourself at all times as if you were Comfortably Ensconced at the Cafe Carlyle. Would you play Blow Pong there? No. Then you are not allowed to do so at the Hi-Ho Beer Barrel Tavern.'' Yet their advice is better than that from some of their elders. (It would be Rude to mention Charlotte Ford by Name.) The Etiquette Grrls say, ''We're not even sure anyone should have Call Waiting at all.'' And much of their advice is needed by the entire nation: ''It is much, much more polite simply to tell someone 'See you in hell' than 'See you in court.' ''
Speaking of advice needed by the entire nation, the Etiquette Grrls note, ''A Martini consists of Gin, Vermouth and a couple of Big Damn Olives.'' I believe it was here, on Page 34, that I fell completely in love with them both. Not that I expect a Fabulous Girl sort of experience, not even after three dates. Here are the Etiquette Grrls on office ''hook-ups'': ''Being Ladies, we don't particularly care to Discuss This Sort of Thing,'' and on public displays of affection: ''Holding hands is absolutely the limit.''
Modern the Etiquette Grrls may be -- we wear Doc Martens with our cashmere twin sets'' -- but the parents and guardians of modern youth will be heartened to hear the Etiquette Grrls exclaim, ''Surely you, too, Dear Reader, have been astonished to see Young People wearing, say, tube tops and capri pants In Church.'' After all, I understand that there are those, among Best Society, Best People or People of Quality, who believe in the existence of an uptight set of rules even more daunting than etiquette.
P. J. O'Rourke's most recent book is ''The CEO of the Sofa.''