If you are male, there is an excellent chance that you are incompletely civilized. Therefore, after the manner of George Washington’s “Rules of Civility,” I offer some useful precepts:

Take off that baseball cap when you’re indoors. If your accelerating baldness bothers you, buy some hair.

Sleeves are not napkins. Or handkerchiefs.

Your comments on the film everyone else is watching are not as clever as you imagine.

Brown shoes with a blue suit, no matter what anyone has told you, are still a bad idea.

You’re still allowed to open a door for a lady, and you’re equally welcome to light her cigarette, on the off chance that you meet one who smokes, in a place that still permits smoking.

If you must sing, find a choir that will tolerate you.

Never mind what that article told you about pheromones — bathe daily. And wash your hair, too. Apply that mousse with a light hand, so that you don’t look like a seagull caught in an oil slick.

Think about buying a three-piece suit. Nothing befits a paunch better than a vest.

Never take a cell phone call at table. You’re not that important.

You should be tying your own neckties, and you should be thinking twice if you own any with Looney Tunes characters.

If you’re stingy with tips, eat at home.

No one cares how you would manage the Ravens/Orioles/Federal Reserve.

If you’re not at the gym or the pool, wear long pants. No one wants to look at those legs.

Your athletic and romantic exploits are unlikely to be out of the ordinary. Save them for your memoirs, which you can instruct your heirs and assigns to burn without reading.

Perhaps, readers, you have something to add?