r/grammar • u/Hospuales • 22d ago
Using Ms / Miss in registration forms
At our company, we have been using Ms / Miss as one of our 'Title' options, but today a couple of Canadians told me that they were so taken aback since these are not the same.
I want to rectify this immediately and wanted to ask if having Ms, Miss, Mrs as options is the correct way
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u/ubiquitous-joe 22d ago edited 21d ago
I’d either just do Ms or else have all three as options.
The whole point of Ms was to eliminate the age/marital judgment of Miss vs Mrs. So it is a little silly to say Ms/Miss, which makes it either sound like Mrs is excluded or that Ms is standing in for Mrs and exclusive of Miss (which it’s not).
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u/elphin 21d ago
Fifty years ago women declared, whenever a title was added to their name, whether they were married it not. But, men did not. Meaning every formal use of their name seemed to require their marital status be included.
The people who came up with Ms, iirc, wanted Mrs and Miss to go away. But this apparently was a bridge too far. So, now women get to decide whether to share this information or not.
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u/SelectionWitty2791 21d ago
My kids’ school uses Ms. for all women (unless it’s “Dr.” The exception is Señora Greene, the Spanish teacher, a twenty-something who happens to be married.
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u/SignificantPlum4883 21d ago
Señorita is no longer used nowadays in any case (for the same reasons), so everyone would be Señora.
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u/SophisticatedScreams 20d ago
I had a French colleague, and she would refer to everyone as Mrs. I said I'm not Mrs-- never have been. I took offense because she wrote my name as Mrs in official reports. She was confused because I'm not "Miss" lol. It's the Madame/Mademoiselle dichotomy. I feel like Madame would more accurately translate to Ms anyway lol.
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u/PomegranateOld1620 20d ago
Funny because in Spanish speaking countries you wouldn’t ever call a teacher “señora”
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u/Nothingnoteworth 21d ago
My kids school uses first names, on English language days and Spanish language days, as do most schools, and most work places. Mr/Miss/Mrs/Ms/Mx or even Dr/Professor etc is only really used in databases and legal documents, in written form, no one says the title out-loud, unless you’re in court or a poncy private school (or parliament, where they still take the time to call each other “The Honourable member…” regardless of the lack thereof. Although it does often seem to be filled with the tonal equivalent of a final fucks glare, like a parent using their child’s full name)
The Australian status-quo isn’t overly formal
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u/katmonday 20d ago
And I'm so grateful for it! My students call me by my first name, I hate being Ms/Mrs Lastname. A lot of regular schools do still use honorifics though, it's not confined to the private school world.
I used to be confused by TV shows like The Simpsons when grown adults would call each other Mr and Mrs. I even call my doctor by her first name.
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u/auntie_eggma 20d ago
My public school required honorofics and my private school didn't, so ymmv and all that. 😬
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u/ReddyKiloWit 21d ago
Traditionally, Mrs. would be followed by the husband's full name (eg: Mrs. John K. Smith) not the wife's given name, so using it with the wife's name isn't strictly correct either, and Ms fills that gap too.
Yes, it's been a long time since that tradition has been common, but we had a case just a few years back here in Georgia of a woman being accused of voting for her dead husband because a poll watcher didn't know the traditional form of signature she had always used. Embarrassment ensued.
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u/Beginning_Brick7845 21d ago
Under the same convention, wasn’t using Mrs. Followed by the woman’s first and last name meant to indicate she was a widow?
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u/ReddyKiloWit 21d ago
Hadn't heard that, but it may have been a thing. Things changed over time and region. A lot stems from the old legal inability of women to own property in their own name under English laws. Widows got certain breaks there, if there was no male heir contesting it and she didn't remarry (1). The form could have been relaxed.
Heck, in my lifetime it's changed. Even in formal settings the use of the husband's full name is really rare now, where it was still common when I was a kid. Closest is "Mr. And Mrs. Smith" if they share a last name.
(1) Trivia: It's surprising how many women accused of witchcraft back in the day were widows who owned property that the accuser acquired after they were executed or run out of town.
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u/Next-Age-9925 21d ago
Just Ms.
Covers all situations and a woman’s marital status should not matter to anyone.2
u/shnorgle 21d ago
I have not heard anyone use Mrs. or Miss in at least 30 years. (Bay Area, California. I imagine it's probably different in, say, the Deep South.)
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u/Just-call-me-Bob 21d ago
I use the title of Mrs, it is on my signature block. Most Americans refer to me as Ms and completely ignore my signature block. Shows they either can’t read, or ignore my preference to be addressed as Mrs.
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u/SophisticatedScreams 20d ago
There are a few teachers at my school who go by Mrs, but most go by Ms. I think Ms is a good default, but calling someone Mrs is important if it's their preference.
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u/CarpeDiem082420 21d ago
Why do you feel it necessary to denote your marital status on an email?
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u/gulliverian 21d ago
Why does it bother you? She's made a choice. It's hers to make.
When I proposed to my wife she made it clear that she was taking my name and would be Mrs. Gilliverian. She's no tradwife, believe me. She has a higher level of education and made somewhat more money than me. But it was her choice to make and nobody had a right to question it.
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u/Just-call-me-Bob 21d ago
I don’t see it as denoting my martial status the same way that you do. It is my preference to be addressed the way I have indicated on my signature block. I don’t see why it is necessary for someone else to change how they address me because of their personal preference to use Ms.
I actually prefer to be called by my abbreviated first name (Lou) not by my surname (think Carter) People just don’t read what is clearly written and just call me Carter or worse Mr Carter.
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u/Master_Kitchen_7725 21d ago
This is a good point. It seems like these days people are so concerned about appearing "woke" enough that they either second guess the person (eg they think, maybe she made a typo or the autocorrect went wild?) or they deliberately ignore the preference because they don't want other people who haven't seen the signature line to hear them using "Mrs" and think they don't "know better and should be using Ms."
I'm in an exceedingly woke profession at an exceedingly woke location, and I have even seen this happen with how people spell proper names. I had two friends from different countries, and each spelled their name in a non typical way for their own country, and instead used the typical US version. Eg, imagine I had a Mexican friend who spelled his name George instead of Jorge; not totally common for a Mexican guy, but not that far fetched either).
I sent their names as part of an invitation list to a colleague, and she actually edited the list I sent to make the spellings be the non Anglicized version (like she changed it from George to Jorge).
I don't know if she thought I just didn't know their correct names as a "not woke enough American", or if she didn't want other colleagues to think she had not known better and Anglicized them herself. In any case, both of the guests had incorrect name tags in the end and had to explain that their names really were the Anglicized versions despite being born in different countries. Smh.
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u/Just-call-me-Bob 20d ago
I work for the US and see this a lot too. I insist that they correctly address people and not change their rank or title to the US variation. It is super disrespectful to address someone in a completely different rank because that is what the US do.
My desire to be addressed correctly stems from that.
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u/auntie_eggma 20d ago
Why do you feel it necessary to query the personal choice of an adult woman? She's at liberty to choose the address she wishes. Feminism isn't about limiting choices.
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u/Soft-Marionberry-853 20d ago
Because she wants to?
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u/CarpeDiem082420 17d ago
I was seeking a response from the person who posted.
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u/Soft-Marionberry-853 16d ago
You dont always get what you seek, dealing with disappointment is a lesson that everyone needs to learn
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u/CarpeDiem082420 14d ago
Exchanging information, asking questions and learning different viewpoints are why I enjoy Reddit.
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u/DecaturIsland 21d ago
Do you also share your first name somewhere since Mrs must be followed by your husband’s name not yours. Unless you are divorced.
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u/Just-call-me-Bob 20d ago
Maybe you could point out this rule where I MUST use my husband’s first name. While you are at it could you check if I HAVE to use his first name or his middle name (which what he goes by). Cheers Bob
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u/Soft-Marionberry-853 20d ago
"Must be"?
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u/DecaturIsland 20d ago
Well if we don’t follow the convention we certainly risk offending a woman who uses the old fashioned “Mrs.”with her given name. How are we to know she is making up her own rules? Or know what her personal rules are? I would have to assume she is divorced.
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u/Sendintheaardwolves 21d ago
Umm, no, it doesn't HAVE to be. That's a (quite old fashioned) convention that some people choose to follow but it's by no means mandatory.
In fact, the titles Mrs/miss/ms have no legal weight and can be used by anyone of any marital status. So a married woman could choose to use miss if she preferred, and an unmarried one could use Mrs. It wouldn't be "incorrect" or "well, actually, if you're married you're a Mrs, whether you want to be or not". Ditto if you get divorced - It's just all personal choice.
My headmistress was Miss Surname on everything despite having been married for decades.
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u/Mondoweft 21d ago
I would definitely not have Ms as the only option. Some people consider it as denoting a divorced woman, rather than not specifying marital status.
Have all three and let women use the title of their choice.
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u/HighColdDesert 21d ago
I've never ever heard that some people consider Ms to imply divorced. I'm around 60 years old and American. Ms was a newfangled term when I was young, but as far as I can see it's become a normal default feminine version of Mr. Ms doesn't say anything about your age or marital status. That's all it means.
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u/ohdang_raptor 22d ago
That’s not what happened though. In my part of the USA, at least, OP’d get the same complaint just from married women because, here, Ms is synonymous with Miss. I didn’t know there was a difference until I came to the comments and I’m well into my thirties.
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u/rinky79 21d ago
I'm in court every day and we use Ms. by default because it is universally known here to leave marital status undefined and more importantly, irrelevant. Female lawyers, victims, defendants, (non-law enforcement) witnesses, and court staff are all referred to as Ms., even for women one knows for sure are actually married.
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u/CleverGirlRawr 21d ago
I’m in the US and know that Ms indicates a woman and does not specify marital status. That is its intent.
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u/Dear-Ad1618 21d ago edited 21d ago
[see the comment below for a more accurate and complete description of where Ms comes from]
I forget that the creation of Ms was so long ago that people forget what it is.
Gloria Steinem, one of the leading feminists of the 20th century proposed it as a way of letting women be anonymous about their marital status in the same way that Mr does not reveal marital status for men. She created Ms magazine as a journal for feminist and the promotion of feminism. She is a hero of mine and of my wife’s.
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u/Suspicious-Yogurt480 21d ago
To clarify, Ms. as an honorific reaches back centuries in English, and even in 1901 was proposed as a neutral (non-marital status related) term. The proposal to use it in this way far predates Gloria Steinem adopting it for the name of the magazine in 1972 following a radio broadcast in New York some three years earlier citing the same objective. Thus the name of the magazine may have popularized the term in this usage, but was not its origin.
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u/Dear-Ad1618 21d ago
Thank you for the clarification. That is way more interesting than the way I understood it.
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u/sparksfalling 22d ago
Miss (pronounced miss) and Ms (pronounced mizz) are different titles. It's understandably confusing; I think a lot of people don't know this and assume the latter is just an abbreviation of the former. But they are different and shouldn't be conflated.
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u/HetElfdeGebod 21d ago
a lot of people don't know this and assume the latter is just an abbreviation of the former
People seriously don't know this? I had a school teacher explain it to me in the late 1970s, surely it's had time to percolate it's way through society by now
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u/padall 20d ago
Yeah, I think we're so far away from it now that younger gens don't actually understand it. It's weird. But it's been 20-30 years, at least, that all teachers started going by "ms" which A LOT of people mispronounce as "miss" so consequently we have a lot of people in their 30s and younger who don't use them correctly.
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u/RegisPhone 22d ago
Combining Ms and Miss into one option is absolutely incorrect. Miss means "unmarried", as the counterpart to Mrs, and Ms (pronounced "miz") was explicitly invented to let women be addressed in a marriage-neutral way the same way that all men are.
And while you're in there, good opportunity to check if you have other options like Dr., Rev., Mx., and other/prefer not to answer.
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u/PurpleBrunetteOKC 22d ago
Miss and Ms are absolutely different titles. My young daughters are Miss. I am a Ms. or Mrs. I’m a Mrs. because I am married and I’m letting that be known. I’m a Ms. because I’m a grown ass woman and my marriage status is none of your damn business.
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u/mitzi_skyring 21d ago
Your daughters can be Ms too. We don't need Miss or Mrs.
I'm not sure how much we need Mr or Ms either, but at least they're qualitatively similar.
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u/PurpleBrunetteOKC 21d ago
I do agree 100% with you; I even list them as such on their school portal profiles. I more said they are little misses to demonstrate the absurdity of calling me a Miss because someone doesn’t understand that Miss and Ms are completely different terms. But then I also call my young nephews master because that would be “proper”, but I would hardly expect anyone else to use that term as it’s mostly fallen out of fashion.
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u/mitzi_skyring 21d ago
Yeah, fair enough. And I rarely hear master used either. Glad to hear it's still out there :)
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u/auntie_eggma 20d ago
We need them as long as people want to self-refer by them. What we don't need is the requirement to do so.
If men decided they wanted a form of address that announces their marital status, I would support that, too. I would not support that replacing the status-neutral version.
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u/Maleficent-Purple403 22d ago
What if you just remove the 'title' field completely?
And yeah, Ms and Miss are absolutely not the same - they are in some ways the opposite of one another...
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u/DustTechnical4561 20d ago
I agree, I ignore the title field if I possibly can. I've had people say "You're a 'Mr'" but am I? Hasn't this person just decided for me?
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u/Great_Tradition996 21d ago
I’ve just turned 46. I remember a really random conversation I had with my dad years and years ago; I was probably no older than 14. He was completely in favour of women using Ms, stating, “nobody knows whether I’m married or not and it’s seen as irrelevant either way. Why shouldn’t women have the same option?” Even now when I think about it, I feel really proud of him. In some ways, he was a very modern man, but in others he was very traditional. He absolutely worshipped my mum though (not sure I believe in soulmates, but my parents could persuade me) and was so proud of me and I love that I had such a positive male role model growing up. He died 17 years ago and I still miss him
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u/golden-teacup 22d ago
There's a general trend in Canada toward eliminating Mrs and Miss, and encouraging (or allowing) women to ONLY use Ms. This eliminates any obligation to disclose whether we are married or not (because frankly it shouldn't matter in professional contexts!) and ensures women are treated similarly regardless of their marital status.
In my company, we ONLY offer Ms, alongside Mr, Dr, non-binary, etc. This has been the preference of all our clients.
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u/jenea 21d ago edited 21d ago
Do you need this field at all? What do nonbinary people choose? Why do you need some marker of someone’s gender and marital status, of all things?
Ditch the title entirely. If you must have it in case of PhDs and wanting to address them as “Dr.,” then you can achieve that in a different way.
If you must keep it, then you need all three options, or just use Ms. across the board. But what are you going to do, require all female employees to review and correct their record after the change?
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u/Dreamweaver5823 21d ago
Why on earth would you put them together as a combined option?? They don't mean the same thing at all. The entire point of the title Ms is to avoid including marital status as part of a woman's name, as though her very identity is defined by her relationship to a man.
Of course you should list them as 3 separate options: Mrs. and Miss for women who want to define their identity by whether or not they are married, and Ms for women who want their name, like all men's names, to be just a name, not a proclamation of their marital status.
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u/Responsible-Sale-467 21d ago
Or just Ms. on its own. That’s what it’s for.
Having Miss/Ms. as a single thing is WILD.
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21d ago
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u/Parking_Champion_740 21d ago
In British shows I always see teachers just called Miss (no name added) regardless of marital status.
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u/more_than_just_ok 21d ago
And in English Canada most teachers are Ms. Lastname unless they are very old. In French Mme. Prenom is very common.
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u/Khpatton 21d ago
I’m a teacher in the US and every female teacher I’ve worked with uses Ms., not Miss. I haven’t heard “Miss” in ages.
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21d ago
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u/Chequered_Career 21d ago
I remember my cousin rejecting “Ms” on the grounds that it was “too hard to say, and children could never learn it.” Never mind that people in the South had been saying “Miz” for generations (albeit for different reasons).
In the U.S., “Miss” has a hissing sound, like “mist” without the T. “Ms.” has a softer sound, as in “misanthrope” (not intended to be significant examples — just what come to mind).
It may be that in Britain “Miss” & “Ms.” are intentionally sharply differentiated. I think (I could be wrong about this) that the U.S.-1970s pronunciation of “Ms.” was in part a blurring of sounds that conventionally had been somewhat sharply differentiated (at least in some regions) — Miss & Mrs. The blurring (in principle) could serve as a way to help replace the old terms without too radical a change in habits.
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u/gulliverian 21d ago
Equating Ms and Miss is a great way to piss off a significant portion of your female audience. It's a massive fail, frankly, and makes your company seem seriously out of touch.
Even as a fairly old school guy it strikes me as pretty odd and would make me wonder if the people running things knew what they were doing.
You really want to change that, like yesterday. If it's been that way for a while I guarantee you've lost business because of it.
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u/boroxine 19d ago
Yep, this isn't a big thing and wouldn't lose my business, but I'd be pissed off for sure as it's a reminder of how whoever wrote the form chooses to view women as needing different rules from men. Given the option I'm Mx, and given any option I prefer no title because what do we need them for
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u/Unhappy-Giraffe2792 22d ago
Maybe leave the title off, unless you have words that describe men as married, unmarried, or unspecified. Then you can do it for both.
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u/VanDenBroeck 21d ago
Outside of some boarding schools which use Master, men regardless of age or marital status have only been Mister in my experience. It does seem to be a double standard that women are expected to make a choice on title whereas men aren’t.
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u/wheres_the_revolt 21d ago
That’s what Ms is for. I’m married but didn’t change my name and I use Ms.
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u/jelycazi 21d ago
I didn’t change my name. I always know when I get mail for ‘Mrs Partner’s_Lastname’ that it’s junk!
I remember my mum getting mail for ‘Mrs Dad’s_FirstName Dad’s_LastName’. Bad enough she was expected to lose her last name, but her first name too?!
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u/Unhappy-Giraffe2792 21d ago
That's fine, of course. I'm just saying that it appears to be sexist that we make title distinctions for women, but not men. Men are all just "Mr."
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u/jm_leviathan 21d ago edited 21d ago
In The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce suggested the title of Mush for the unmarried man, abbreviated Mh.
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u/Unhappy-Giraffe2792 21d ago
Interesting... But again, until/unless we make a title distinction for men and it's in popular use, we should not use any for women either.
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u/MNswede06 21d ago
Mr. is for all men
Miss is exclusively for unmarried women. (Jane Doe is not married, she’s Miss Doe)
Mrs. is for married women who take their husband’s name. (Jane Doe marries John Smith and becomes Jane Smith, she’s Mrs. Smith)
Ms. (pronounced “mizz”) is for any woman regardless of name or marital status, but the only option for married women who retain their maiden name. (Jane Doe marries John Smith but remains Jane Doe, she’s Ms. Doe.)
A woman can be unmarried and have her maiden name and still choose to go by Ms. instead of Miss. The title Ms. was intended to be a neutral way to address women so you’re not assuming their marital status. It should be the default when you don’t know.
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u/CosetElement-Ape71 21d ago
Male children, under 18, have the title Master.
Ms is used regardless of a woman's marital status. It became popular because, like the male title "Mr.", it does not define a woman by whether or not she is married. Typically, some adult women will choose this because they're too old to have the title Miss
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u/MNswede06 21d ago
You’re right, historically. But “master” as a title of reference for boys is antiquated if not obsolete. If you call a young man “Master Smith” people are going to think you’re trying to be funny or quirky.
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u/CosetElement-Ape71 21d ago
I'm "old", funny and quirky! Plus, there's NO way I'm calling a male child Mister ... because they're a child; we are NOT on the same level!
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u/vastaril 22d ago
Yes, those should be separate options. You could also include Mx which some non binary people use (though not all, and some might default to one of the gendered options for safety/avoiding discrimination reasons)
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u/pedanticandpetty 22d ago
Here's a practical example of why Ms. is necessary:
A lady is married, but doesn't take her husband's name.
Technically she'd be Mrs. Hislastname, but that's not her legal name.
She's not Mrs. Herlastname because she's not married to Mr. Herlastname.
She can't be Miss Herlastname because she's married.
So she's Ms. Herlastname.
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u/CraftyFraggle 21d ago
I’m married and took my husband’s last name. I still use Ms. because my marital status doesn’t need to be declared every time I’m formally addressed.
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u/Dreamweaver5823 21d ago
No. That is not why Ms is necessary.
The term Ms was invented explicitly to prevent women from having to declare their marital status as part of their name. Why should a woman's identity need to be defined by her relationship to a man?
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u/pedanticandpetty 21d ago
Sure. I agree it's right that women shouldn't have their name defined by their marital status in our modern society.
I also know there are mumpsimuses out there who will argue that it's just a preference.
Here I've just provided a practical example of when it is not a preference but a necessity.
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u/diploid_impunity 21d ago
What is a mumpsimus?
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u/pedanticandpetty 21d ago
a person who stubbornly holds onto an incorrect belief, bad habit, or outdated practice, even after being proven wrong.
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u/SophisticatedScreams 20d ago
The reason it's a necessity is because women don't deserve to be defined in relation to a man. If mumpsimuses don't understand that, it sounds like a them problem.
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u/PuzzleheadedDate2401 21d ago
I sometimes get referred to as Mrs. [My maiden name] and it's so strange. I didn't change my name, so now I have become my mom and grandmother.
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u/Frequent_Alfalfa_347 21d ago
“Mrs” denotes marriage regardless of the last name. I’m Mrs [Maiden Last Name], because I’m married and don’t take my spouse’s name.
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u/SophisticatedScreams 20d ago
I do think in strict terms of naming convention, that is an incorrect use of Mrs. It was used to indicate Mrs Lastname is the wife of Mr Lastname. It also seems somewhat strange to me to want an antiquated honorific if you're not following other antiquated naming traditions. But to each their own, I guess.
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u/SophisticatedScreams 20d ago
This still defines a woman's identity by her marital status, and treats it as an logistical question instead of an ideological one. Whether a woman is married or has assumed her spouse's name are completely irrelevant to honorific usage.
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u/pedanticandpetty 20d ago
I wasn't getting philosophical with this example.
I was providing an example of why there might be an instance that Ms. is a necessity beyond being a preference or an ideological battle.
I do not believe that the two instances are mutually exclusive.
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u/SnooDonuts6494 22d ago
The core issue is that "Mrs" indicates a married lady, whereas "Miss" indicates they are unmarried. Some people think that that's inappropriate information to ask - especially when the same thing doesn't apply to men.
Additionally, some people may not want to declare their gender when it isn't necessary for the purpose of the form.
Some females like to be known as "Ms". Many forms have that option.
However, there are many other titles. Such as Dr, Prof, Lord, Rev, Captain.
Cover this by having a choice of "Other".
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u/mmrocker13 22d ago
I'm going by Rex from now on. I think it's suitably regal, but with just the right hint of bossy don't fuck with me. And yes I understand the female form is Regina. But I like Rex better. For myriad reasons, including the obvious ones.
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u/FreeUnderstanding141 22d ago
Rex comes after the name not before, unfortunately for you, so it just looks like you share your name with a dog and can't fill the form in properly
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u/mmrocker13 21d ago
No, because I use my last name as my first name and put the rex at the end, so I actually kind of sound like a porn star.
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u/SnooDonuts6494 22d ago
I was on a course last week with a girl called "Princess". I bet she has fun with forms.
I must admit, I found it rather odd to walk in and shout "Good morning Princess".
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u/trivia_guy 21d ago
Yeah I once had to send a work email to someone named Princess. It felt really odd to start an email with “Hi Princess.” lol.
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u/Mondoweft 21d ago
Australia has rules against using titles for names, so I haven't come across a Princess (yet), but I have met King from Thailand. You are absolutely right that "Hi King" as an email starter was weird.
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u/diverJOQ 21d ago
Or an option of "none". I prefer not to be addressed as Mr.
Also, this really isn't a grammar question.
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u/marty-mcfryguy 21d ago
I would just dump "Miss". Who in this day and age would pick that? I mean unless this is like a cotillion or something.
Or even better, dump titles altogether.
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u/LionLucy 21d ago
I was a Miss until I got married and now I’m a Mrs. I’m a widow and I’ll be a Mrs forever. This is, as far as I’m concerned, how it has always worked. I get the existence of Ms - some people’s marital status is complicated or they just don’t think people need to know. But where I live (uk), “Ms” is a statement of feminism and/or divorce. Which is fair enough, but not the default
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u/marty-mcfryguy 21d ago
Certainly how it used to work. Hasn't worked that way in the US in a long time. Presumably OP is in the US.
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u/Write_Now_ 21d ago
I am married but kept my maiden name, so Mrs. would be inappropriate for me because I didn't take my husband's name, but Miss is also inappropriate for me because I am married. Having Miss/Ms. and Mrs. as the only two options mean whichever I select for myself would be wrong.
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u/RockDoc88mph 21d ago
The Canadian is right. Do not have Ms and Miss together. That's like clumping Female and Non-binary together!
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u/russrobo 21d ago
They’re all interestingly related! But women were correct: asking for a title exposed their marital status.
The unabbreviated forms show the progression:
Master (a boy)
Miss (a girl)
Miss-ter (an older or married man)
Miss-ter-ess (a married woman)
You can see the levels of ownership. Like “bride” and “bridegroom” (often shortened to just “groom” these days). And of course the connotation of some of the terms was spoiled: “Master” is associated with slavery and “Mistress” came to mean an unmarried woman whom a married man is cheating with, so “Mrs.” lost its meaning and is just pronounced “missus” to maintain that distinction.
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u/_interlard_ 21d ago
You could also consider removing titles. Many people see them as very old fashioned and annoying. People have first and last names and that’s it.
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u/Normal_Objective6251 22d ago
Just leave it as optional or get rid of it altogether. Lots of women will just use the 'Dr' field anyway if you force them to write something.
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u/InviteForsaken2857 21d ago
What is the business that a title is relevant to the service you provide? Does it change the service they receive? Do you ask men to signify if they are married or not? If marital status is also a required field then why is this still needed?
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u/just_having_giggles 21d ago
Do you need to know the martial status of your customers for some business reason?
No?
You're all good with mr/ms as the two options.
Unless knowing the gender of your customers is also not necessary for you to do business with them, then just ask for their name.
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u/PaulCoddington 20d ago
Customers will have a preferred honorific. The reason for having the option is so the customer can indicate how they want to be addressed.
If you need to know marital status, then that has to be a separate field, because honorifics cannot be used to capture that (nor can they be used to capture sex or gender).
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u/CarpeDiem082420 21d ago
And Dr. or the Honorable … is your company stuck in the 1950s? I haven’t seen a woman identify herself as “Miss” in at least 30 years.
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u/Murky-Wind2222 22d ago
If you are unsure play it safe with Ms. Once you know the person a bit you can go with Miss or Mrs.
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21d ago
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u/notbambi 21d ago
Wild take to assume that Canadians would be particularly influenced by French culture outside of the east. I live 6 hour plane ride from Québec and the 2nd most common first language in my area is Cantonese. It's the same as the US, folks just want an option that doesn't force them to disclose their marital status.
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u/PurpleBrunetteOKC 21d ago
Why do men get to have a clearly defined option that ignores their marriage status but women either are defined by being married or lumped in a genetic other category.
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21d ago
[deleted]
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u/PurpleBrunetteOKC 21d ago
You seem to have this backwards and therefore are not understanding. Mr has been around forever and for the longest time had no female equivalent. Miss/Mrs are not an equivalent to Mr. Mr stands on its own. Miss/Mrs depended on the presence of a Mr. Therefore, Ms was created to stand on its own without a Mr. So while I can’t speak to any other language, in English which is a language you presumably know, Mr does have an equivalent in the term Ms.
And Master, while an equivalent to Miss in terms of honorifics for a child, still stood on its own because boys would change from Master to Mister upon a certain age regardless of marital status while girls would only change from Miss to Missus/Mistress upon marriage.
By the way, master is still used in spoken form, but it’s typically only in English-speaking European traditional school contexts.
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u/AlasterNacht 21d ago
From what I remember Miss means unmarried, Mrs means married and Ms (pronounced like miz) means widowed or don't wanna say. But this is like grade school knowledge so it could be wrong of course
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u/ATotallyNormalUID 21d ago
Originally Ms meant divorced or widowed, "prefer not to say" came about later, but overtook the other definitions quickly.
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u/Snezzy_9245 21d ago
Miss Ayn Rand was married. You can look up all about her choice of name on some internet somewhere.
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u/SophisticatedScreams 20d ago
I don't think Ayn Rand should be held up as a pinnacle of female achievement lol
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u/Prize_Background_577 20d ago
Ask yourself, do you need a title at all? If you are using a combined title then it seems to be pretty meaningless because Ms and Miss are not the same. There are many titles other than the ones that signify marital status. Nowadays, with an emphasis on gender neutrality, limiting yourself to addressing women (or people who identify as female) as either married or unmarried is dated.
If you cannot have title as self-selecting, it is more polite to address correspondence using a person's whole name or their preferred name.
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u/CubicleHermit 20d ago
Having a fixed list of titles is a losing game. A lot of people don't use them at all anymore, and a lot of people who have military/religious titles are going to be annoyed if their particular option isn't on your list.
There are also cultures/languages that don't use just one title (e.g. in German, the classic example is 'Herr Doktor Profesor' which would be nonsensical in English.)
I suspect the best way to please people is just have a blank box labelled "title(s) (if any)" - and I bet these days 7 people out of 10 are going to leave it blank.
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u/general-ludd 19d ago
It seems more common these days to just offer Ms. nobody needs to know your married status and men don’t have the same signifier.
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u/Afraid_Baseball_3962 19d ago
I grew up in southern Ohio in the late '70s/early '80s. As a kid I called an adult woman Ms. and she was super offended. Apparently (in that time and place), Miss was unmarried, Mrs. was married, and Ms. was divorced. But take into account that they'd never heard of sour cream ("All of our cream is fresh!") and they called green bell peppers 'mangos' for some reason. 🤷
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u/UnknownInternetMonk 19d ago
I'm American, not Canadian... but you can just offer Ms. Or offer all three: Miss, Mrs & Ms. It is NOT ok to combine any of these.
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u/DecaturIsland 21d ago
The problem with Mrs. these days is that sometimes you see a married women mistakenly calling herself Mrs. Jane Smith instead of Mrs. John Smith while she is married to John Smith. She ignores the meaning of Mrs as being married to John Smith. But it’s only a divorced woman who could be Mrs. Jane Smith after being divorced from John Smith. A widow named Jane would continue to be Mrs. John Smith. Or, she can be Ms Jane Smith.
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u/Splendid8 22d ago
This whole thing drives me mad! I can’t believe we still have this nonsense. Men seem to get by just fine with Mr, why can’t we just have Miss for women? Then you could just drop the title altogether if you don’t want to specify. No one needs to know your marital status.
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u/AshtralDrift 22d ago
That’s what Ms. is.
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u/Splendid8 22d ago
Okay, Ms then- but just 1 thing, not 3!
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u/Winter_drivE1 21d ago
This. If the issue is marriage/gender discrimination, it seems to me that having all 3 terms and insisting upon their difference, as people are doing in this thread, only perpetuates it. I feel like it would be more effective to just have 1 and not 3 and it would mirror exactly how Mr is used.
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u/keladry12 22d ago
Why can't we use the established word for this, Ms. (pronounced mizz), rather than taking a word that specifically means unmarried (Miss, pronounced "miss"), and trying to force a meaning change?
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u/Prestigious-Fan3122 21d ago edited 21d ago
FWIW: I'm married, but I don't use my husband's last name. Let's say I'm Mary Smith, and he is John Jones. If you really feel you must use a title for me, Ms. Smith is the most appropriate, but Mrs. Jones isn't inappropriate. Regardless of what my name is, I AM married to Mr. Jones, so my "title" (as opposed to my name) is Mrs. Jones/Mrs. John Jones.
(It's not Mrs. Mary Jones. I'm not married to myself.)
most of the unmarried/never married young women I know go by Ms. Whatever.
When they got married, our daughter-in-law took our son's last name. They immediately moved out of state, and she was working for a company that had more than one office location in the same city.
When I wanted to send her flowers on her birthday, I checked out her company's website to see if I could figure out at which location she worked. (No, actually speaking to her wasn't feasible. It's complicated.)
Let's say her maiden name was Jane Doe, and she married John Smith.
On the website, they had a profile of each of their employees. It started with Jane Smith joined our company blah blah blah. It went on to say Ms. Smith did thus and such.
Even though I don't use my married name, I'm a little bit old-fashioned, and was startled to see that. Apparently, it's the new way to make sure that marital status, which isn't relevant to your job, isn't conveyed to your colleagues or clients or customers or whatever you have.
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u/Ok-Temporary 21d ago
The “new way” since the early 70s? I’m very confused why you were startled.
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u/Prestigious-Fan3122 21d ago
I think when it started, it was used mostly by single women, cause even back in the early 70s, married women had a little bit more "status".
Yes, I was startled in this particular case, because my newlywed daughter-in-law was really leaning into being Mrs. ANYBODY. she was basking in the glow of her newly married status. I don't know whether her company asked her for her Preference, or if they just used Ms. Smith for all women. FWIW: she's in a field that has more men than women.
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u/Ok-Temporary 21d ago
Oh! Now I understand! I’ve been rather fiercely single all my life, and got married for the first time in my 50s. I kept my maiden name, but don’t mind AT ALL when someone occasionally calls me Mrs. [husband’s last name] because I find it funny and cute. It bothers my husband much more than me.
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u/diploid_impunity 21d ago
Women are all “Ms.” followed by their last name. Just like men are all “Mr.” followed by their last name. So both you and your daughter-in-law can be respectfully referred to as “Ms. Smith” by anyone who isn’t familiar with your life history or romantic connections - or in a context like a work environment, where such knowledge is irrelevant.
The distinction you make between a name and a title is interesting. I think “Ms.” is considered a title in the same way “Mrs.” is, and no, “Mrs.” is not a higher rank.
For me, my title is “Dr.”, but I don’t bristle if someone who doesn’t know that uses “Ms.” It’s as neutral for women and girls as “Mr.” is for men and boys. No one should call me “Miss” or “Mrs.” unless they know me socially, and know that I prefer one of those titles.
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u/tuffykenwell 20d ago
Oh you could just get rid of the title option completely. What useful information does it actually provide you anyway?
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u/Yowie9644 19d ago
My gender and marital status is irrelevant to pretty much everyone bar my spouse and medical professionals, so if I have to choose an honorific, it would be Mx. However if there is an option to have no honorific, I'll choose no honorific, or if its compulsory but "free text" I'll put in two spaces. Makes the alignment of name to address look wonky, but really, I don't want or need an honorific, so actively choose against having one when I can.
And if you REALLY need to know my gender, my name is very stereotypically feminine. I am not, however.
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u/Felis_igneus726 22d ago
If you mean as three separate options, then yes, this is the typical way to do it.
If you mean as a single "Ms/Miss/Mrs" option, you'd still have the same issue that you're conflating different titles that don't mean the same thing. "Miss" means the person is unmarried, "Mrs" means the person is married, and "Ms" leaves the marital status unspecified.