Daniel Marsula, Post-Gazette Click illustration for larger image.

You are in a meeting room in a hotel with several dozen other people from as many different companies who are gathering for a management seminar. A continental breakfast was offered, but now there is only one doughnut left -- and it's your favorite kind.

Do you take it?

No, says corporate trainer and personal coach Judith Bowman. The reason? Simple consideration for others: There may be someone else who needs it more.

Not taking the last doughnut is just one of many tidbits of social wisdom in Ms. Bowman's new book, titled (not coincidentally), "Don't Take the Last Donut: the New Rules of Business Etiquette."

Other examples of things that you don't do in a business setting include dunking doughnuts in coffee, wearing a napkin around your neck ("that is for children") and sending food back to the kitchen, even if it is not to your liking.

Such rules may strike some as so commonsensical as to raise the question, "Do we need someone to tell us this?"

Apparently. Etiquette has been a hot topic for books and newspaper columns since at least 1922, when Emily Post made herself synonymous with the topic by writing "Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home." And Amazon.com search of "business etiquette" returns more than 1,500 results. The matrix of prescriptions and proscriptions that make up etiquette are not always as obvious as the "leave the last doughnut" rule.

"Etiquette is all about rules and boundaries," Ms. Bowman said in a phone interview from her Glocester, R.I., home office, noting that the word comes from the French "estiquette," or "label," and gained its meaning when King Louis XIV put up estiquettes at Versailles to keep aristocrats from trampling his garden. When people honor the rules and boundaries of etiquette, she said, "It's empowering" and makes them more effective in their work.

"Once they're confident in knowing that everything about them is correct and on target, then they are more confident and free to focus on people and business topics at hand," she said.

The new rules, she said, are really the old rules adapted to new ways of doing things, such as cell phones, and to new circumstances, such as globalization.

Ms. Bowman's concern for etiquette is a result of her upbringing. Her parents entertained often and made it clear that, "We were expected to be junior hosts and hostesses" for guests, especially the younger ones.

"It was our responsibility to make their children feel warm and accepted and welcome," she said.

When she entered the corporate world, she was "horrified" when she found herself dining with wealthy and powerful individuals who lacked social skills that for her were basic.

In 1993, she founded her company, Protocol Consultants International, to pass on etiquette and social skills to the next generation. But when a local newspaper did a feature article about her, she received three phone calls within 24 hours from companies asking if she could do for their sales and marketing people what she was doing for children. Ever the entrepreneur, she said yes and since then has focused primarily on seminars for professionals.

Despite her book's title, Ms. Bowman said etiquette is as much about doing the right things as it is about not doing the wrong things.

In that spirit, we close with things to do at your next business meal to show that you are what used to be called "a class act."

Order something easy to eat. No ribs or lobsters.

If you order a hamburger, cut it in half as you would any other sandwich.

To butter your bread, break off a small piece and butter it over your bread plate. The "small" is important, because eating too large a piece all at once will hamper your ability to converse gracefully.