Can’t we just do away with all of them? I’m a first name gal, I want to be known by my first name and I want to call you by your first name.
Easy Peasy…
Plus it amuses the hell out of the really junior research staff. The technicians in my lab (including myself) keep any physical mail addressed to us as “Dr.” as a souvenir. Next best thing to actually getting the diploma, right?
There are a small handful of people that get offended when you don’t address them as “Dr.”, so it’s definitely the right place to start.
And in parts of the South “Miss Lucy” sounds like “Miz Lucy” - so its completely believable that some people would think the words are just different spellings of the same word.
I had a female boss who was very offended by the whole Ms. thing (this is back in the 70s when it was shiny and new). She always said “Ms. is short for ‘miserable’.” Old school thinking.
My Dad was all up in arms about the whole “Ms.” thing in the seventies. He claimed it kept him from receiving much needed information about the women he worked with.
Why a married man would need that information I can’t imagine. . .
I’m 37 and knew about this, and to be honest am surprised anyone doesn’t.
Out of curiosity, where are you located? Maybe it’s more common on some regions than others.
I was in the third grade in parochial school in the northeastern US in 1974, and I was taught, “Mr.”, “Miss”, and “Mrs.” Then “Ms” was mentioned, in passing, it was new, and allowed you to formally address a woman if you didn’t know marital status. And I thought, “Hmmm…since I usually don’t know, that will come in handy” – or I thought something along those lines in appropriate 9 year old diction.
Anyway, the sitcom “On Day At a Time”, from 1976 onwards, often made a BIG deal about how the lead character was “Miz” Romano. When she caused another woman to stand up to her husband, and the Schneider character never really said it right, it was always “emm-es” Romano. I’m guessing, for much of the US, it may have been a sore point, for a lot of people. You might still find someone now who just doesn’t like it. You may find it hard to find a consensus on the subject.
In my experience, “Ms” is usually only used by what used to be known as spinsters. A 50ish woman of that description at my workplace can often be heard above the general office din correcting people on the phone: “That’s Mzzzzzzz!”.
I’m sure it’s a very useful word, but it sets my teeth on edge for this reason.
I’m a young married woman who kept her maiden name. I use Ms., and I know I’m not alone in that.
I love Ms.
It always irked me that men get away with the generic “Mr.” which reveals nothing about their marital status, but women had to put up with “Mrs.” and “Miss.” It’s sexist and condescending. If a man’s marital status is irrelevant, then so should be a woman’s. “Ms.” is a nice simple way to solve the problem. Those who still want to be addressed by the marital-status-defining term can either introduce themselves as such or ask people to refer to them in that way. “Ms.” should be the default unless the person’s preference is otherwise.
Little anecdotal aside, at least where I’ve taught (WV and IN), most of the kids pronounce all their female teachers names to sound like Miss. “Miss Jones” or “Miss Smith” is very common to hear, and I’m rarely called Mrs. L, with the extra syllable of “missus”. Some of the kids actually sound more like Miz L, but I’m used to Miss, because it’s not meant as a term of disrespect, just because it’s said quickly. The majority of them write it correctly, at least, though they did have a little trouble last year. The three women on our team were the very married me, and then a 20-something divorced mom, and a 40 something single lady. I was easy – Mrs. But the kids were never quite sure what to do with the other two and always afraid to ask.
According to Miss Manners (though I can’t cite the date of the column), people completely misunderstand how “miss” and “ma’am” are to be used in these situations. They are not honorifics. Polite address of someone you don’t know is completely different than using Ms., Mr., Mrs., Miss as a title in front of a name.
If addressing a waitress in a restaurant, it is never improper to address her as “miss” regardless of her marital status. This is the traditional form of respectful address to someone who is providing a service for you, or who is your junior socially (such as an older gentleman addressing a young woman, or an executive addressing an employee that she doesn’t know).
By the same token a saleswoman at the cosmetics counter should address her customer as “ma’am” even if the customer is single and younger, as a show of respect. Marital status has nothing to do with it.
This tradition seems to be fading as people come more to associate these as tokens of age or dating availability rather than respect, and as people more and more refuse to age gracefully.
I use Ms.–I’ve been married for 13 years and use both names. I use Ms. all the time to address letters to teachers for a library program I’m involved with. It’s very handy.
Around here, “Miss”/“Miz”+GivenName appears to follow a different set of phonetic rules. While “Ms” is always “Miz” and “Miss” always “mis”, the honorific plus first name is said without open juncture (distinguish “girl friend” from “girlfriend”) and the silibant is voiced or not based on what follows: an unvoiced consonant takes “mis” and a vowel or voiced consonant “miz”: “MissTracy” vs. “MizDenice” or “MizElaine” (all of these being transcriptions of phonemic usage, of course).
What is “Ms.” an abbreviation for? I’ve never seen it spelled out. Is it “Miz”? Somehow that seems wrong…
Ms. is a contraction of “mistress” (used as an honorific; contrast with “master”) - and so are “Mrs.” and “Miss”.
I’m wondering where MADAM went in all of this. I was taught that when addressing something to a woman you do not know the status of, it was Madam Businesswoman. A formal letter to both women and men would be addressed “Dear Sirs and Madams.”
We seem to be comfortable with the contracted form ma’am… but where did its predecessor go?
Cite? I was under the impression that, unlike “Mr.” and “Mrs.,” “Ms.” is not an abbreviation of anything. This crappy dictionary at least seems to support the idea that it was a invented blend of “Miss” and “Mrs.”
“Dear Sirs and Mesdames” (sometimes abbreviated “Mmes.”) is the somewhat dated ultraprecise salutation for a letter to a mixed-sex group or organization.
Noted in passing: while “Ms” gained popularity during the 1970s and became a de facto standard a decade or so later, I and my agemates learned the “Miss”/“Mrs.” disjunction as the mandatory salutation for a woman to whom you were writing. (A boy under about 16 would properly be addressed “Master” in similar circumstances, FWIW.) Presumably in those glass-ceiling days you would almost never have occasion to write to a woman whose marital status was unknown – and the rare exceptions were expected to include in their signature block “(Miss) Lucia LaBambooza” or “(Mrs.) Adelberta Snipps”, so that you would be advised how to address the response.
Actually, I believe the proper spelling for this would be “Madame” (plural: Mesdames) rather than “Madam”…unless you’re talking about a particular type of businesswoman, anyway. 