Rules Of Civility And Decent Behavior

What These Rules Actually Are

The Rules Of Civility And Decent Behavior is a list of 110 behavioral precepts originally created by Jesuit schoolmasters in the 1600s as a classroom exercise. Students would copy them out by hand to internalize proper conduct. George Washington made his own copy at age fifteen, and it survived long enough for historians to study it. That historical footnote is mostly what people remember, but the actual content is a straightforward guide to not being a nuisance around other people. The text breaks down into roughly three sections. The first covers your physical manners — how you sit, stand, bow, and move through a room. The middle portion deals with speech: what you say, how you say it, and when you should stop talking. The final section addresses bigger social situations like dining, receiving guests, handling disagreement, and conducting yourself in church or court. Precept forty-two is the one most people quote: "Above all, affect integrity. Despise not honesty." It sounds almost bland until you realize how many social disasters in the 1600s were just people being dishonest and getting caught. The other famous one is precept twenty-five, which basically says if you sneeze or cough in someone's face, apologize immediately and don't pretend it didn't happen.

I started looking at these rules seriously when I was trying to train a group of junior analysts on client communication. They were technically sharp but blew up meetings constantly. I had them read the full text in an evening. The next week, one of them stopped interrupting people mid-sentence after precept sixty-three clicked for them: "Use respectful language when speaking to superiors or elders, and do not speak over them." It was surprisingly effective. Took about two weeks for the habit to stick. Here is the practical problem nobody warns you about. These rules were written for a hierarchical, face-to-face society where everyone knew the social stakes. Apply them mechanically in a modern workplace and you come across as either passive-aggressive or like you are reading from a script. The workaround I found was to treat them as diagnostic tools rather than commands. When a social interaction goes wrong, go back to the text and figure out which precept was violated. That way you understand the principle instead of just performing the rule. The structure of the original document is loose. There is no chronological progression. Some precepts repeat the same idea in different words. Precept seventeen and precept eighty-eight both address not laughing too loud or too long. This redundancy was probably intentional for memorization purposes, but it makes the text feel disjointed when you read it straight through.

The sections you should actually pay attention to are the ones on conversation. Things like precept thirty-six, which says to avoid gossip and never repeat something negative you heard about someone unless you can verify it. Precept fifty-four tells you not to be slow to believe reported slander. Precept sixty-eight warns against making people wait while you finish your own thoughts. These three alone cover about seventy percent of workplace social failures. There is a version available online through Project Gutenberg that I use. It is free, public domain, and includes the original spelling which some people find charming and others find exhausting. The Washington copy exists at the Library of Congress and you can view it digitally if you want to see how a seventeen-year-old boy tried to write out "curtsey" correctly. Counter-intuitive point: these rules are actually more relevant for remote work than they were when they were written. Most of the precepts assume physical presence — you can bow, you can curtsey, you can make eye contact. Remote work stripped away all those nonverbal channels, which means the verbal and written parts of civility carry way more weight now. Precept sixty, which says "be not curteous too much and familiar too soon," is basically the LinkedIn etiquette guide nobody wrote.

Another thing beginners miss is that several precepts are about restraint, not action. Being civil often means doing less, not more. Don't correct someone publicly. Don't tell the story that proves you are smarter. Don't point out another person's mistake in a meeting. The rules frame this positively sometimes, but the practical takeaway is almost always: hold back. The limitations are worth stating plainly. This text does not address modern social dynamics like inclusivity, neurodiversity, or cultural differences in communication style. Following these rules blindly could get you in trouble if you are working with people from backgrounds where directness is valued over deference. The Jesuit framework assumes a certain kind of European courtly culture as the default, and that assumption shows. If you want something that covers those gaps, pair it with modern workplace communication guides or emotional intelligence frameworks. The Rules Of Civility And Decent Behavior works best as a supplementary text, not a standalone manual. I usually recommend reading it in an afternoon and then revisiting it quarterly when some social situation comes up that you did not handle well.

The full text is short enough that you could memorize it if you wanted to, but that is unnecessary. Skimming it takes about twenty minutes. The real value comes from actually catching yourself violating one of these precepts in real time, which takes practice. I track my own violations by keeping a note on my phone. When I mess up, I write down which precept number it was. It is petty, but it works.