I am occasionally so offended by the way someone knocks on my door that I won't bother to answer it. I ask myself, Do I really want to speak to someone with a knock like that? A knockstyle can say significant things about a personality. A too-loud, too-insistent knock, a pounding on the door, is the mark of an unpleasantly confident person, verging on impudent. A knock comprised of many (too many) rapid-fire staccato raps suggests an impatient person, the kind of person who is always thinking "I don't have time for this." That person is invited to go off by himself and make better use of his precious time. A musical knock indicates an overly cheerful person, someone who tiresomely takes every opportunity to indulge his sense of whimsy. Exhausting. A meek, barely audible knock hints at a person who has not quite made up his mind whether he wants to talk to you or not, his equivocation is obvious. Here I'm talking about the kind of soft tap that almost begs not to be heard, more of a rub than a proper knock. Then we have the knock that is perfectly fine by itself but is repeated, a knock then a stomp around the porch then a return to the door for another knock, then another, the knock of someone who simply refuses to accept that no one is answering, the knock of visitor incredulity. This pattern of knocks is an unpromising expression of smugness or self-regard, it suggests that the knocker simply cannot believe that no one is home, an unacceptable state of affairs. This is the kind of knock I take the greatest pleasure in ignoring.

A good knock is a not-too-soft, not-too-hard series of three or four not-too-rapid strikes against the door, one series only, followed within thirty seconds by the sound of footsteps receding away from the house and off the property.