Contrary to the way you haphazardly throw on that tie every morning sir, there is actually more than one way to tie a tie.

Our friends at ShirtsMyWay.com have come up with an awesome breakdown of 30 ways to tie a tie that you should know, rating each in aesthetics, symmetry, difficulty and knot size.

Each summary also includes an image and a video so you can practice when no one is around, yet pull it off and tell everyone you’ve been doing it for years.

When I opened the package containing the dress shirt from Mizzen + Main, I did it on a Sunday night, intentionally, because every Monday morning I go to the dry cleaner. Surely a dress shirt straight out of the mail needs to be labored over for optimal performance.

A quality dress shirt that looks good, feels great and doesn’t cripple your wallet? Excuse me while I laugh my face off.

I pulled the shirt over my torso and was befuddled at how the shirt fit me so well, as I had casually requested a “large” sample. There were no previously exchanged measurements, or painstaking trips to the Men’s Warehouse to act like I was buying a dress shirt in order to acquire my exact dimensions. And yet, the shirt fit my torso perfectly, with perfect sleeve length to match. It even made my biceps look outstanding thanks to the superior fit.

I was sitting in a meeting at my job watching the division manager lead a presentation. While gesticulating wildly, I watched as the unbuttoned collar on his button down shirt flipped and flopped with every movement, just like Mitt Romney at a campaign stop.

And I wondered aloud to myself; “What is the protocol for that?”

Obviously, with a tie the collar better be buttoned down or you’ll like an idiot. But what about sans tie? For the answer, I needed a random sampling. And for that, I went to this thread on catholic.com; because where else would you even go?

Based on a sampling of 56 dudes, 67.86% (38) of respondents said they still button them regardless of no tie.

What do you do, sir? Leave a comment below.