Use fork rather than knife when possible

Dear Miss Manners: Perhaps you can assist my husband and me in resolving a friendly dispute over accepted uses of a fork.

While I understand that there are many different types and sizes of forks intended for a variety of uses (salad, dinner, seafood, to name only a few), our question is one concerning the fork as an actual tool for eating, whichever specific fork it might be.

My husband is of the understanding that it is improper manners to use the tines of the fork to spear foods. He has been quick to correct the children that they are to scoop their peas and corn with their fork, rather than impale.

My position is that all of our utensils were designed to follow their function, and that if the fork were not intended as a spearing utensil, it would not have tines but instead would resemble a garden spade and therefore be rendered redundant by the spoon.

But perhaps there are finer points to be made that I have missed.

Miss Manners, could you help us, please, by providing us the specifics of proper fork usage? It would be very much appreciated if you could also touch on the apparently forbidden “cutting with the side of the fork” issue and maybe provide a short history of utensil “evolution” that could fuel some interesting dinner conversation with the children.

Gentle Reader: If Miss Manners were you, she would not pursue that line about what you figure forks were designed to do.

Until two centuries ago, it was a popular argument that the tools most obviously designed for getting food to the mouth were fingers. And the instrument of choice with which to spear everything was the knife, often, the same hunting knife used to spear a passing rabbit in the fields.

Although the first known appearance of the table fork was in the 11th century, it was viewed with suspicion until – well, now, when people still declare they don’t know “which fork to use” to show what genuine folks they are.

But it took over the dinner table as the instrument of choice, replacing the knife whenever possible. Far from being forbidden, cutting with the side of the fork is the preferred method for anything easily subdued, such as fish, salad and cake.

The tines are there because the fork has the more robust job of impaling meat while the knife is being used to cut it.

But impaling peas is too petty a task for it. American manners require scooping them (or reciting the little poem about using honey), while Europeans use their knives to mash vegetables against the back of the tines.

You will have to decide how much of this you want to trust your children to know. They may well end up arguing that the 10th-century method was a tradition that should be respected.

Dear Miss Manners: Is there a correct way to decline a request to tour my home? More than once, I have had people (distant relatives or acquaintances) unexpectedly arrive, and after welcoming them into the entrance, they have expressed expectations of a full-house tour.

Perhaps, in the future, I can graciously decline by quoting you?

Gentle Reader: Or claiming that Miss Manners is asleep upstairs and cannot be disturbed?

Citing her to say that pressing such an expectation is rude and that the host need not agree to it (although both statements are true) would propel you into the rudeness of rebuking your guests. She is afraid that you must learn to say firmly, on your own authority, “No, no, we won’t bother with that. Come and sit down; I’d much rather talk with you.”