9 Southern Manners South Carolinians Still Expect From Newcomers

Think good manners in South Carolina means saying please and thank you?

That’s the entry fee.

The rest runs deeper, through the two-finger wave on a back road in Aiken County and the dish you’re expected to send back full.

These are the Southern manners South Carolinians still expect from newcomers.

1. Speak First

South Carolinians speak to strangers, and the silence you brought from up north reads as rudeness here.

When you pass someone on a sidewalk in Greenville, you say “Hi!”

Every time.

The person stocking the shelf at your Piggly Wiggly gets a hello, and so does the guy in line behind you, and neither of them is trying to sell you anything.

Newcomers who keep their eyes on the floor come off as stuck-up long before anybody bothers asking where they’re from.

2. Ma’am and Sir

Half the arguments transplants have about South Carolina start with somebody calling a 40-year-old woman ma’am and getting a face for it.

It isn’t about age.

Ma’am and sir are the local grammar of respect, and children here learn them roughly when they learn to tie a shoe.

A South Carolina kid who answers a teacher with a flat “yeah” is going to hear about it at supper.

So use them on the cashier, the mechanic, and the 22-year-old behind the counter at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), and watch how fast the room warms up.

3. Steering Wheel Wave

Get off I-26 and onto a two-lane road in Newberry County, and you’ll notice South Carolinians lifting two fingers off the wheel at every car they pass.

Lift yours back.

The wave doesn’t mean the driver knows you, and it doesn’t require a full hand either. A full hand is what you give your own mother.

Two fingers, maybe a nod, eyes stay on the road.

Drive past a neighbor twenty times without lifting a finger, and you’ve told the whole road exactly what you think of it.

4. Never Arrive Empty-Handed

Showing up at a South Carolina house with nothing in your hands is the fastest way to have people talk about you on the ride home.

Bring something. Anything.

A pound cake, a jar of pickles, a bag of boiled peanuts from the stand on the highway, a six-pack of Cheerwine for the kids.

The host will tell you not to bring a thing, and the host doesn't mean it, and everybody in the state understands that exchange.

Store-bought is fine. Empty hands aren't.

5. Return the Dish Full

South Carolina's strangest manner is also its warmest, and transplants break it constantly.

When a neighbor sends food over on a plate, you don't hand the plate back empty.

You fill it.

Brownies, biscuits, a few tomatoes out of your garden, and if you can't cook at all, then a bag of the good peaches from the roadside stand outside Gaffney.

The plate keeps moving between two houses, which is the entire point, and an empty dish stops the whole thing cold.

6. Bless Your Heart

Newcomers hear "bless your heart" in South Carolina and think they've been handed a compliment.

Sometimes they have.

Said to a woman whose dog just died, it's tenderness, and said about a man who parked across two spaces at the Harris Teeter, it's a verdict with a smile stapled to it.

Tone carries all of it, so listen to the vowels rather than the words.

The good manner here isn't using the phrase, and no transplant should try it for at least a year. It's knowing which one you just received.

7. Pull Over and Stop

A funeral procession comes down a road in South Carolina, and traffic in both directions stops.

Not slows. Stops.

Drivers pull onto the shoulder, cut the radio, and wait until the last car with its headlights on has gone by, and older men still take their hats off behind the windshield.

The people in those cars have no idea who you are, and it doesn't matter one bit.

Blow past a procession in Orangeburg County and somebody will remember your car.

8. Dress for Dinner

South Carolina forgives a lot of things at dinner, and cargo shorts on King Street at eight o'clock isn't one of them.

Charleston runs hot and humid and still expects pants after dark, which visitors find unfair and locals find obvious.

Flip-flops stay at the beach.

The rule loosens the farther you get from the coast, so a fish camp on Lake Murray isn't going to blink at your boat shoes.

Downtown at night, though, dress like you meant to come.

9. Write the Note

A text doesn't close the loop in South Carolina, and neither does an email.

Somebody hosts you, feeds you, or gets you through a hard week, and a card goes in the mail with your actual handwriting on it.

Three sentences will do.

Grandmothers in the Upstate still keep a drawer of blank notes and stamps for exactly this reason, and they can tell you the last person who failed to send one.

It costs a stamp and eight minutes, and it buys you about a decade of goodwill.

Where the Reputation Started

South Carolina's manners have a paper trail, and it runs through a woman in Illinois who never lived here.

Marjabelle Young Stewart, an etiquette author who tutored the daughters of two presidents, started ranking American cities by their manners in 1977, and she read thousands of letters from travelers to do it.

Charleston kept winning.

By 2000, the city had taken the most mannerly city title for the seventh year running, and it stayed on the list every single year the list existed.