By ALEX WILLIAMS


As Web-enabled smartphones have become standard equipment for executives, people in meetings are increasingly giving in to the temptation to check e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, even (shhh!) their favorite site for sports scores.

But a spirited debate on etiquette has broken out. Traditionalists say the use of BlackBerrys and iPhones in meetings is impolite. Technoevangelists insist that to ignore realtime text messages in a need-it-yesterday world is to invite peril.

In Hollywood, both the Creative Artists Agency and United Talent Agency ban BlackBerry use at meetings. Tom Golisano, a billionaire and power broker in New York State politics, recently said that he pushed to remove Malcolm A.Smith as the State Senate majority leader after the senator met with him on budget matters in April and spent the time reading e-mail on his BlackBerry.

The phone use has become routine in the corporate and political worlds - and grating to many.

A third of more than 5,300 workers polled in May by Yahoo HotJobs, a career research and job listings Web site, said they frequently checked email in meetings. Nearly 20 percent said they had been castigated for poor manners.

Despite resistance, the debate seems to be tilting in the favor of smartphone use, many executives said. Managing directors do it. Summer associates do it. It spans gender and generation, private and public sectors.

A few years ago, only “the investment banker types” would use BlackBerrys in meetings, said Frank Kneller, the chief executive of a company in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, that makes water-treatment systems. “Now it’s everybody.” He said that if he spotted 6 of 10 colleagues tapping away, he knew he had to speed up his presentation.

It is routine for Washington officials to bow heads silently around a conference table - not praying - while others are speaking, said Philippe Reines, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Although BlackBerrys are banned in areas of the State Department headquarters for security reasons, their use is epidemic where they are allowed.

“You’ll have half the participants BlackBerrying each other as a submeeting, with a running commentary on the primary meeting,” Mr.Reines said. “BlackBerrys have become like cartoon thought bubbles.”

Some professionals admitted that they occasionally sent mocking commentary about the proceedings, but most insisted that they used smartphones for legitimate reasons: responding to deadline requests, plumbing the Web for data to illuminate an issue under discussion or simply taking notes.

Few companies have formal policies about smartphone use in meetings, according to Nancy Flynn, the executive director of the ePolicy Institute, a consulting group in Columbus, Ohio.

Ms.Flynn tells clients to encourage employees to turn off all devices. “People mistakenly think that tapping is not as distracting as talking,” she said. “In fact, it can be every bit as much if not more distracting. And it’s pretty insulting to the speaker.”

Still, business can be won or lost, executives say, depending on how responsive you are to an e-mail message. “Clients assume they can get you anytime, anywhere,” said David Brotherton, a media consultant in Seattle. “Consultants who aren’t readily available 24/7 tend to languish.”

Playful electronic bantering can stimulate creativity in meetings, in the view of Josh Rabinowitz, the director of music at Grey Group in New York, an advertising agency. In pitch meetings, he said, he often traded messages on his Palm Treo - jokes, ideas, questions - with colleagues, “things that you might not say out loud.” The chatter tends to loosen the proceedings. “It just seems to add to the productive energy,” he said.

Then there is the issue of image. In many professional circles, where connections are power, making a show of those connections even as co-workers are presenting a spreadsheet presentation seems to have become a kind of workplace boast.

Mr.Brotherton wrote in an e-mail message that it was customary now for professionals to lay BlackBerrys or iPhones on a conference table before a meeting - like gunfighters placing their Colt revolvers on the card tables in a saloon. “It’s a not-so-subtle way of signaling ‘I’m connected. I’m busy. I’m important. And if this meeting doesn’t hold my interest, I’ve got 10 other things I can do instead.’”