Pointing at People–or Not

Tina Shaycort in Melissa, Texas, writes:

I pointed to one of my neighbor’s gardens when I was telling a friend how messy it looked. My friend said, “You shouldn’t point like that.” I asked her why. She said, “He [the neighbor] might see you.” I told her that he was nowhere in sight. She replied, “It’s not polite to point like that.” I told her that I wasn’t pointing at the neighbor himself; I was pointing at his garden. She said, “The yard is an extension of the owner. You shouldn’t point like that.” What do you think?

Marilyn responds:

Pointing at someone is commonly seen as an act of aggression, and pointing at their belongings will often be taken as an affront. So I can understand why your friend was concerned. She didn’t know whether the neighbor might see the two of you from a window, etc. Consider how you’d feel if you and your friend were walking down the sidewalk, and someone pointed to your shoes. You wouldn’t like it, would you? Regardless, pointing at anything from a distance is generally useless, so why would you do it? For example, to specify a particular building among others, you would describe some aspect of it. (“It’s the one with two columns in front.”) . Pointing wouldn’t help. Mostly, pointing should be reserved for directions (“The elevator is that way,”) or for when your finger is close to the item you want to identify (“No, not that cookie. I’d like this one.”)