Debrett’s launches a guide to social notworking netiquette

FOR SOME OBSCURE no doubt marketing led reason, etiquette experts at Debrett's have compiled a list of Do's and Don'ts for manners-aware social notworkers.

Top Ten Tips for Tweeters and Other Social Animals is a collection of patronising "handy hints" that the firm said will "ensure that more of us start minding our Ps and Qs on the net and uphold a certain degree of digital decorum". Of course, The INQUIRER has yet to acquire its copy.

But, the tips are the sorst of things that do not need saying. So, for example, it recommends that you never tweet that someone has a gun and is waving it around, unless you are absolutely sure that there is danger involved and it's not just because someone is holding a foppish photo shoot.

It also suggests that "less is more" when it comes to social notworking updates. "Be sure that your posts are written to enlighten others, and not used as an exercise in vanity, or as a way to share too much information," it said.

Anyone who wants to win approval from the etiquette fanciers will also be wise not to text under the influence, something that Debrett said Charlie Sheen was particularly fond of doing. Whoever he is.

Venting your frustrations online is also not a good idea, and the firm suggests that one should never air their dirty laundry in public.

What else does it suggest? Well nothing that should surprise anyone with a little sense, but then we are talking about a firm that makes its living from peering down its nose at everyone else. So perhaps we will leave it there.

Besides, we are at times drunk, or angry, or drunk and angry, and we have a LOT of dirty linen. µ