Civility is making headlines again — that lack of it, that is.

Recent surveys by workplace-research firms, such as Sogolytics and the Society for Human Resource Management, suggest that nearly half of Americans have witnessed or experienced incivility at work.

Recent Pew Research Center surveys found that about one-third of Americans say they often encounter rudeness in public life.

The word civilitas — Latin for “the behavior expected of a citizen” — gives us “civility.” In ancient Rome, it meant the conduct that allowed people to live together without chaos.

By the 1500s, the Renaissance thinker Erasmus was teaching civility as moral discipline in his book “On Civility in Children.” His message was simple: manners are what make civilization possible.

A young George Washington embrac

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