Born and raised in California
I’m left-handed. I hold my fork in my left hand. Cut with my right hand. Set my knife down to eat. We never still had our knife in our hand while bringing food to our mouths and we were to always have our forks positioned right side up. “We’re not hillbillies!”
My lefty dad did the same thing as me: fork in left, cut with right. My right-handed mother and siblings all cut with their right hand, then had to switch their for to their right hand to eat.
American. Right-handed. Use dominant hand for both. Don’t understand why there’s not a button for that.
The ironic thing is that the zig-zag (switching) method originated in Europe. The purpose was to slow one down to encourage dinner conversation rather than just shoveling it in. Fork in left and knife was considered somewhat barbaric. Europeans started abandoning the zig-zag style not long after Americans started adopting it. Probably so they could continue to make fun of Americans for eating funny.
O.K., I made that last sentence up.
Anyway, there’s an instructional video on formal dining etiquette that they show the students at my school. (I’m staff, not a student). The overly proper woman teaching the course says that either method is perfectly proper and that each has advantages and disadvantages.
Exactly. No need to switch, which would be awkward anyway. Cut with the left and eat with the right. What’s so hard about that? I understand that etiquette dictates the reverse, but I don’t enjoy the food as much with a fork in my left hand.
For us it was “raised in a barn” or “raised by wolves.”
Knife in right/fork (tines down) in left to cut. Fork (tines up) in right to eat. Utensils down between bites. (It always seems strange when I see people just holding their forks and knives while chewing). Pushing your food onto your fork with your knife was unthinkable.
Not really American, but taught table manners by American-raised parents, so I wrote “American”.
Right handed, knife in right, fork in left, held throughout the meal.
Murican. I really don’t recall there ever being rules. I’m sure there were, as I remember us having paper placemats as kids and other stuff that was meant to properly socialize us, but if so, it evades me. Fast forward to many years later, I hold my knife in my dominant hand (right) because my left is completely worthless and couldn’t cut its way out of a paper bag.
Naw. I’m left handed, but also somewhat ambidextrous. I hold my fork in my left hand and my knife in my right hand because that’s how the table is set.
My daughter is extremely right handed, and had very little dexterity in her left hand. She switches. She probably has to. No one else in the family switches hands, she surely didn’t learn it from us.
She also holds her fork in her fist when using the knife. I don’t think her left hand has the dexterity to hold the fork in her fingers with her left hand.
I actually don’t think that most parents are the ones to teach pre-teens or teens these kinds of things. You kind of get used to the way your kid eats, so unless etiquette was a priority to you, you generally don’t care. I used to hold my spoon or fork in a fist until I was in high school and other kids started making fun of me. My parents never noticed.
Switching hands just seems like a lot of work. At least she’s not lazy.
American.
I keep my fork in my dominant (right) hand. No switching. If I need to use my knife, I just pick it up with my free non-dominant (left) hand.
I don’t get switching. No reason for it.
Poll results are currently showing ‘American’ and ‘Non American’ proportions of fork-switchers to be basically the same. That’s interesting. Maybe nobody actually gives a crap about what’s ‘proper etiquette’ we all just do what’s easy for us .
What’s official ettiquette in Canada?
The poll doesn’t ask about switching.
Yup. That would have been a more interesting question, imo.
Not American: knife in dominant hand.
But I switch occasionally if I don’t have to use the knife for some time.
American here, right-handed, raised in the northeast and now living in California: I do the ‘switchy thing’ — always have, likely always will.
While I am mostly ambidextrous, I normally use my knife in my right and fork in the left while eating and do not switch. I am American and grew up in the Midwest in a single parent household that was slightly below the poverty line
Canadian. Fork in left hand, knife in (dominant) right hand. No switching. Everyone in my family eats this way and the first time I saw an American doing the switch thing I watched in fascination. It looked so bizarre to me. If I’m eating something that doesn’t require a knife I hold the fork in my right hand.
Non-American. Knife in dominant (right) hand and I don’t switch. I was taught that the “proper” way to eat was fork in left hand and knife in right hand. Now it feels natural.
If I’m eating rice or something that only requires a fork, I’ll use my right hand.
Non-american. If the dish I’m eating requires both knife and fork, then knife in right, fork in left, with tines pointed down. Some dishes only require a fork, and I could go either hand and the fork might be tines up or down. If the food needs to be stabbed, then tines down, otherwise just scoop up with the tines up.
Follow our quick and easy guide to basic cutlery etiquette – as we know it to be!:
The knife should be held in the right hand with the handle firmly tucked into the palm. The index finger should lie along the handle, this helps to control the movement of the knife. Holding your knife like a pencil is incorrect and allows little control over your cutting actions.
The fork should be held in the left hand, prongs down into the food at an angle. If it is held correctly, handle firm in the palm of the hand, and index finger resting along the top, there should never be a need to stab it upright into the food being prepared for cutting, holding it a slight angle firmly gives control, securing the food on the plate while you make the cutting motion with your knife. When you hold your fork like a pencil then it is hard to control and the ungainly stabbing motion comes into play!
Okay, this is from an Irish website, but I learnt table etiquette from my mother and it was pretty much the same as that.
American: knife in dominant (right) hand, fork in left. I don’t do that hand-switching bullshit.