![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The use of Mrs.
Dec. 18th, 2008 09:28 amMiss Manners is my heroine.
Yes, it's true. Though I am not really a stickler for a lot of formalities in life, I used to read her column regularly, loved her novel of manners, Gilbert, and have Miss Manner's Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior right next to me every day at work. You know. In case something comes up.
Did you know the correct utinsel for eating ice cream is a wide tined fork?
Anyway, the real reason the book is at work is because Cellmate and I have a running debate about the use of Ms. and Mrs.
I default to Ms. except when I know the woman prefers Mrs., or when I am sending something to a married couple together.
Cellmate feels that soooo many people are insulted by the use of Ms. if they are married women, that it is very important to establish whether the woman is married, and then defaults to the use of Mrs., unless she knows the woman prefers Ms.
I dislike this behavior in the extreme, because Cellmate refuses to use Mrs. correctly, when she uses it.
Yesterday, we entered the debate again over whether to use Mrs. in addressing a client we knew to be divorced. I reacted on an emotional level, saying, "I think I would vomit…" Cellmate responded that "almost every" divorced woman she knows still uses Mrs.
So, I turned to my dear Miss Manners for her thoughts.
For anyone who cares, here is what Miss Manners has to say on the subject of how to "correctly" address a woman. (I put this here less as an argument in the LJ venue for the use of Ms., which I suspect most of us prefer, but rather as a reminder of the complexities of the use of the title Mrs. I hate when people tell me how to "correctly" address someone, but they don't have a clue what they are talking about. They just want to try to make me stop using Ms. *glares pointedly at Cellmate over my monitor*)
( The Ms. Mystery )
PLEASE TO BE NOTING!!!!! It is NEVER correct to be Mrs. Daffodil Awful. That is actually the thing that bugs me the MOST about these people who frown on the use of Ms. as inproper or inferior. They want to be Mrs. but they want to use their own name. AND they want to say that is somehow more "correct" in terms of etiquette than just calling them Ms. While completely agreeing with Miss Manners about the importance of addressing people in the way they are comfortable being addressed, if we are having an etiquette argument then we cannot ignore the rules of etiquette. I'll call people whatever they would like to be called. But if Cellmate wants to "correctly" address her envelopes to her divorced female clients, she can't pretend that it's just "correct" to call the person Mrs. Herfirstname HerExsLastName. *huffs*
I'm sorry? Was that random? You have seen my rant about people who name children after themselves and 60 year old men still going by III, right?
Yes, it's true. Though I am not really a stickler for a lot of formalities in life, I used to read her column regularly, loved her novel of manners, Gilbert, and have Miss Manner's Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior right next to me every day at work. You know. In case something comes up.
Did you know the correct utinsel for eating ice cream is a wide tined fork?
Anyway, the real reason the book is at work is because Cellmate and I have a running debate about the use of Ms. and Mrs.
I default to Ms. except when I know the woman prefers Mrs., or when I am sending something to a married couple together.
Cellmate feels that soooo many people are insulted by the use of Ms. if they are married women, that it is very important to establish whether the woman is married, and then defaults to the use of Mrs., unless she knows the woman prefers Ms.
I dislike this behavior in the extreme, because Cellmate refuses to use Mrs. correctly, when she uses it.
Yesterday, we entered the debate again over whether to use Mrs. in addressing a client we knew to be divorced. I reacted on an emotional level, saying, "I think I would vomit…" Cellmate responded that "almost every" divorced woman she knows still uses Mrs.
So, I turned to my dear Miss Manners for her thoughts.
For anyone who cares, here is what Miss Manners has to say on the subject of how to "correctly" address a woman. (I put this here less as an argument in the LJ venue for the use of Ms., which I suspect most of us prefer, but rather as a reminder of the complexities of the use of the title Mrs. I hate when people tell me how to "correctly" address someone, but they don't have a clue what they are talking about. They just want to try to make me stop using Ms. *glares pointedly at Cellmate over my monitor*)
( The Ms. Mystery )
PLEASE TO BE NOTING!!!!! It is NEVER correct to be Mrs. Daffodil Awful. That is actually the thing that bugs me the MOST about these people who frown on the use of Ms. as inproper or inferior. They want to be Mrs. but they want to use their own name. AND they want to say that is somehow more "correct" in terms of etiquette than just calling them Ms. While completely agreeing with Miss Manners about the importance of addressing people in the way they are comfortable being addressed, if we are having an etiquette argument then we cannot ignore the rules of etiquette. I'll call people whatever they would like to be called. But if Cellmate wants to "correctly" address her envelopes to her divorced female clients, she can't pretend that it's just "correct" to call the person Mrs. Herfirstname HerExsLastName. *huffs*
I'm sorry? Was that random? You have seen my rant about people who name children after themselves and 60 year old men still going by III, right?
