EDITOR’S NOTE: Informer editor Andrew Perzo is on vacation and will return Jan. 1. Today’s column features a question and answer that first appeared in 2010.

I’ve noticed that, even on TV, when people are eating, they are cutting their food with the knife using the right hand and then they use the left hand to eat. When did this start, and is it proper?

The method you describe, known as the European or continental style of eating, has been around longer than the so-called zigzag method that many Americans use.

Whether one way is considered correct and the other not depends on where you are — as is generally the case with manners, table and otherwise.

The difference in choreography between the continental and the U.S. styles purportedly stems first from the Middle Ages’ two-knife method of eating — one knife to hold the food, the other to cut and convey it — and second from the sparse importation and use of the fork in colonial America.

The fork was introduced in Italy in about 1100, three centuries or so after its introduction in the Middle East, and it spread throughout the continent slowly, in first the two-tine and then the three- and four-tine varieties, over the next 600 years.

In Europe the fork replaced the left-hand, hold-steady knife and — because it was also pointy — led to the rounding of the right-hand knife, which had been used to spear food and move it to the mouth. But in America, forks were rare and spoons common.

“In the absence of forks some colonists took to holding the spoon in the left hand, bowl down, and pressing a piece of meat against the plate so that they could cut off a bite with the knife in the right hand,” Henry Petroski writes in “The Evolution of Useful Things.”

“Then the knife was laid down and the spoon transferred from the left to the generally preferred hand, being turned over in the process, to scoop up the morsel and transfer it to the mouth (the rounded back of a spoon being ill suited to pile food upon).

“When the fork did become available in America, its use replaced that of the spoon, and so the customary way of eating with a knife and spoon became the way to eat with a knife and fork. … This theory is supported by the fact that when the four-tine fork first appeared in America it was sometimes called the ‘split spoon.’ ”

The Informer answers questions from readers each Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. It is researched and written by Andrew Perzo, an American Press staff writer. To ask a question, call 494-4098, press 5 and leave voice mail, or email informer@americanpress.com.