Anita Dufalla, Post-Gazette Click illustration for larger version.

Good, engaging conversation is like a Frisbee that you catch, spin and toss to the next person.

September launches a season of holiday parties, cultural galas, benefit concerts, balls, roasts, fashion shows and even a polo match, so now is an excellent time to brush up on your ability to speak with sincerity and style.

Many people who meet for the first time in social settings or are just developing a friendship often violate one of the 10 rules that govern civilized conversation, Margaret Shepherd said.

"There is, what I call, real-time blogging. People are face to face, but they are still musing out loud. They are just rambling about what interests them. They haven't learned to catch the Frisbee, look around and throw the Frisbee to the next person," said Mrs. Shepherd, co-author with Sharon Hogan of a new book "The Art of Civilized Conversation."

So, if you arrive late to an event, do not offer a detailed, five-sentence explanation. Attribute your tardiness to tangled traffic and change the subject.

Otherwise, Mrs. Shepherd wrote, "you will sound defensive and your listeners may suspect that you're making the whole thing up."

Every year, Mrs. Shepherd, who lives in Boston, speaks at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's "Charm School" about the importance of gracious communication. She also has co-written "The Art of the Handwritten Note" as well as 13 books about calligraphy.

Polishing your conversational skills requires practice. If you regularly avoid brief, social encounters, try establishing pleasant connections with neighbors, co-workers or other people you see regularly. Mrs. Shepherd suggests these approaches:

	Anita Dufalla, Post-Gazette Click illustration for larger version.

Smile at the woman behind the coffee shop counter.

Ask your child's teacher about his or her vacation or holiday plans.

At the next large family gathering, talk with someone you don't know well so you can establish connections within the larger group.

Ask your co-worker how his or her day is going.

Invite people over or go out to lunch and pay attention to the finer points of how the conversation moves. When you are in a situation that makes you nervous, such as your boss's cocktail party, you may feel more confident.

Whether you are a college freshman greeting constant waves of new faces or an adult who knows no one at a cocktail party, you can use five fail-safe questions with certain themes to open communication, Mrs. Shepherd said.

The journey. "Are you from here or did you move here? When? Why?"

The recent past. "What have you been working on lately?"

The situation you share now. How do you know the host? What did you think of that speech?

Companions. "Is your family from the area?" Not everyone has children or a spouse; virtually everyone has family.

The return question. But what about your work (or your family, travel, hobby)?

The return question, Mrs. Shepherd said, is key because, "People almost always want you to ask them what they asked you. I know it works. If they're friendly, they're going to project on to you sort of a model of themselves."

If the person you meet for the first time watched the Super Bowl recently, the author suggests you ask if they played football in high school, a strategy that would undoubtedly earn points with Steeler fans.

A different strategy is useful for college students, who, Mrs. Shepherd said, need to disconnect from their electronic devices in order to connect.

Incoming freshmen may have talked on the phone or traded e-mail with a roommate, but meeting a roommate in person for the first time is different.

"Get out of the room as soon as you can. Where you are talking makes a big difference.

In a dormitory room, "there's a lot of turf claiming going on. You want to have a relationship with this person that doesn't have that as the subtext. You want to have something that happens outside the room," Mrs. Shepherd said, adding that new roommates should go out for coffee to escape turf issues.

"Even married people still go out to dinner to talk about something. The venue is a real influence on what you're going to talk about and how."

Students who spend hours chatting online, Mrs. Shepherd said, should bear in mind that to develop friendships, face-to-face communication always trumps remote chats.

"This sounds like such 'old lady advice.' Your online friendships can be a little bit unrealistic if they don't touch base in the real world, often and face to face. Face-to-face relationships are what you want to end up with. It's safe to say those are the relationships that will endure. You're going to end up with half a dozen real buddies from college," Mrs. Shepherd said.

Online communication, though quick, is lacking in reality.

"Those online relationships are a shared fantasy world. It's like spending your whole life in a college mixer," Mrs. Shepherd added.

Above all, pay close attention to the responses you hear, especially in receiving lines at weddings or bar and bat mitzvahs.

President Franklin Roosevelt's three terms in office required his presence in receiving lines, those prattling parades of ceaseless, vapid yak.

To entertain himself, FDR sometimes greeted guests by saying, "I murdered my grandmother this morning."

"He'd just drop some outrageous comment to see if they were doing anything except auto-response," Mrs. Shepherd said.

Many were and responded, "Yes! Wonderful! How nice!" But one attentive woman replied politely, "I'm sure she had it coming to her."

One reason civilized conversation is harder to find, Mrs. Shepherd said, is that it occurs less frequently in American homes.

"Families don't eat together any more. Kids don't learn to sit down and speak to other people. They don't see grown-ups modeling it. They are not privy to how adults conduct a conversation at a dinner table," she added.

In the Internet age, Mrs. Shepherd said, "We now see this culture of interruption so that even a good conversation between 16-year-olds is constantly chopped up with cell phone calls to other people, messages, little blinking games and ear phones with iTunes."

One of her favorite movies is Barry Levinson's "Diner," a 1982 film set in Baltimore where young men talk in a restaurant booth.

"They are a hoot. They are just wonderful. But they are not interrupted."

If you want good conversation, Mrs. Shepherd said, "Find a place where you are not interrupted, where you can give it some time, where people are not performing for other people, where there's this sense of safety. I do think having food and sitting down is a good idea."

If you talk with someone during a meal, she said, "Instead of sitting across the table from them, sit to the right of them so it's not so direct, so head-on. Some people, without realizing it, can find that intimidating. I'd rather sit at your elbow than across from you."

A great place for two people to hold a conversation is during a car trip.

"A conversation or a connection is not just about you and the other person. It's about this third thing between you -- a relationship. When you take your eyes off each other for a while, you can put your eyes on the relationship."

Do not be afraid of a gap in the conversation, said Marjorie Smuts, a former television interviewer who lives in Shadyside.

"It doesn't need to be nonstop. Take a breath. There are a lot of people who like to think in between statements. Give a person a chance to react to what you've said," Mrs. Smuts added.

A surefire conversation killer, Mrs. Smuts said, is, "Let me tell you about my operation. This is not real interesting to most people."

If you are participating in one conversation, don't start another.

Today, Mrs. Smuts said, "We see people text-messaging while they are in a conversation. It's just so incredibly rude."