to write to the NHS using just my initials and to expect them not to assume I'm a Mr.

[RedToothBrush]

I have made five FOI requests in the last month, using my initial and no title.

Two of the responses (so far) I've had have been addressed to Mr.

AIBU to think that I should be allowed not to state my gender and marital status when making formal and official enquiries and to simply be addressed as I have titled myself.

Is this really too much to ask or expect?

[AChickenCalledKorma]

I don't know. "Dear E H P Taylor" just looked wrong.

[MadameCastafiore]

I work for the NHS and this would just be another thing in all of the PC bullshit that would add a few minutes to my overloaded day! Do you think we don't have more to do than bother about you whilst battling all the bureaucratic shit and waiting with baited breath for the bloody CQC to rick up and tell us what a shit job we are all doing???

Why not write your bloody title FGS. What is the big issue.

[ThePinkOcelot]

Well you should have used more than just your initials shouldn't you?! People not wanting others to know their marital status etc - I mean really, what is wrong with these people! Get a grip, and while you're at it, a life!

[AllYoursBabooshka]

Most of this stuff is done by computer now Celtic, whoever is dealing with it maybe required to give a title to complete the letter for printing on the program they are using.

As others have said, they don't have time to umm and ahh about this. They are far too busy.

Some people are just looking for a fight IMHO.

[Floggingmolly]

Bit ironic, really. Someone so happy to use the Freedom of Information Act to excess; so loathe to disclose such a hugely personal detail as her gender...

[MrsBW]

I didn't understand what a 'first world problem' was before reading this.

YANBU to want to be addressed as you refer to yourself.

But honestly - are there not bigger battles to be fought in the sexism war??

[BackforGood]

YABU - manners dictate we don't write 'Dear B.F.Good', we write the title. If there is no title, then historically people default to Mr. If this bothers you, then put what you would like to be called, in your correspondence, when you make the initial contact.

BF Good (Mrs)
BF Good (Lord)
BF Good (Dr)
BF Good (Rev)
BF Good (Ms)

or whatever title it is you want to be used. Hardly rocket science.

[deleted203]

YABU. The correct grammatical way to sign a letter if you are using initials is to put your title in brackets afterwords UNLESS you are a man. So if you don't want them to assume you are male then you need to sign it J Smith (Ms).

[CabbageLeaves]

We have patients who insist on being called Brigadier Smith, Capt Smith, Lord Lieutenant Smith etc etc and tbh where possible we comply with this but I always wonder about someone who identifies their self worth through a title. It seems such a pedantic thing hen there are more importnant issues but for some people it's THE thing they will pass judgement on....

[CaptainVonTrapp]

Pedantic? To provide someone with your correct title and expect them to use it?

[AnyoneforTurps]

Every FOI request costs an organisation time & money. Some are entirely justified but I hope the OP has a damn good reason for submitting 5 in a month to an NHS organisation. And I hope she doesn't then complain when more and more money is spent on administration, rather than patient care.

[CelticPromise]

I don't understand why all the posters concerned with old fashioned manners think it's ok to default to Mr. You are likely to be wrong 50% of the time. I think that's rude. Just use an initial, then you can't be wrong.

[CabbageLeaves]

To provide someone with your correct title and expect them to use it?

Well OP didn't provide it. As I said we try to comply but it's not always provided and if it isn't and we don't use Brigadier to call in and he has a wobbly about it...it says more about him tbh

I would not default to Mr ever.

[HazleNutt]

Has anybody saying "default is Mr" ever thought about why and if it's a rule worth following? Considering that there are actually more women in the UK, why should it be a default? Why assume that the person whose gender you don't know is a man?

[Montybojangles]

If you can't even be arsed to identify yourself fully, why on earth should people busy working in the nhs with better things to do be arsed to worry about offending you with an incorrect guess as to your title??

[CelticPromise]

If the harried NHS employee is so busy, why waste time guessing when you can just leave it out?

[deleted203]

I don't understand why all the posters concerned with old fashioned manners think it's ok to default to Mr. You are likely to be wrong 50% of the time. I think that's rude. Just use an initial, then you can't be wrong.

Because this is the grammatical rule. It isn't rude. It is using the correct English. It is considered rude to write Dear J Smith.....however. It doesn't matter whether you agree with it or not - it is simply that if you are going to write a letter using formal English then this is the rule, and people who do NOT wish to be addressed as 'Mr' need to provide their correct title. It is a little like using 'Yours faithfully' and 'Yours sincerely' - you don't just pick whichever one you like better - you should be aware of which one is correct to use.

[mrsmalcolmreynolds]

sowornout it is not an issue of grammar (which is the constuction of sentences in a formally approved manner in order to aid common understanding). The approach you describe is a (in my view rather outdated) matter of letter-writing etiquette. The reason I distinguish between them is that (IMO) grammar is extremely important, letter-writing etiquette much less so.

Not sure OP is BU, although at least they did not assume that a woman must be Miss or Mrs. On a tangential note, I do get driven nuts by the number of my relatives who automatically send stuff addressed to me as "Mrs DH's surname" having never bothered to check whether I kept my original name when we got married (I did!). Don't mind the grannies (now in their late eighties) but am quite peeved at those our age (mid-thirties).

[CelticPromise]

It is also, in ye olde letter writing rules, appropriate to address a married woman as Mrs Husband'sName Husband'sSurname. I would never do this either, because it may be ' correct' etiquette but it's flipping rude!

[Meglet]

Yanbu.

I have to send out letters via a database and have to default it to 'Mr' when the sex is unknown. I hate it and grind my teeth each time it crops up.

[Heebiejeebie]

I'm really surprised by the responses on here
If someone doesn't put a title, don't make one up, much simpler.
If the computer system is poorly written and doesn't allow that, it should be changed
Putting a (as likely to be wrong as right) title in a letter is not a law of the land or grammatically helpful. The default to Mr is a sexist hangover. Even the laws of succession are changing.
It's perfectly reasonable to make 5 or 500 foi requests in a month, esp if you are surveying different organisations (eg asking GP Surgeries if they have access to adequate translation facilities or baby changing areas)

[curiousuze]

I used to work in customer services and if I wasn't sure I'd put 'dear sir/madam' and not bother with a title on the address. That said, OP, I wish I had your problems.

[houseelfdobby]

In the first big privatisations in the 80's, the lawyers decided to give the payouts to the first named on each account. By convention, most joint accounts are called "Mr and Mrs" Smith so MOST of the time that decision caused the windfall to go to the man only. The lawyers decided it wasn't they who were being sexist but rather those who went along with the convention "Mr and Mrs" .

So sometimes titles and conventions have real world impacts. Let's get rid of them. I dislike putting Mrs or Miss because I don't feel my marital status is any business contact's concern. Nor do I like putting Ms as most people take that as code for "divorced" and I am not divorced (and if I was, it would still be none of their business - I don't routinely ask men I deal with what their marital status is, and they would think it odd if I did.

I just want to be called H.E. Dobby. I also make FOI requests with no title and have always been written back to as "Mr". I don't really care BUT once I added a further question which happened to indicate I was female. At that point they refused to answer further as they said they had reason to believe I was using a false identity, so convinced were they that I was male as "Mr" is what they had decided to call me. I had to provide evidence that I had all along used my real name and it was only them who assumed I was a man.

[CecilyP]

It is no longer thought appropriate to put Dear Sir/Madam if someone has supplied at least a name. As a reply to an FOI request will be an individual letter, it will be up to the person replying as to what they put. It is usual to address the recipient as Dear Mr Smith or Dear Ms Smith, rather than Dear R T B Smith, although the latter is always a possibilty. The sender did not choose to do this, so had to make a guess - so only a 50% chance of being right, so yes, OP, YABU. Perhaps they assumed that a man would be more likely to sign with initials and a woman more likely to give her full name.

On a computerised database, you would only have a limited number of options, so the inputer could use a drop-down menu for ease of input. It would not give the option of an unlimited number of combinations of initials. The only other possibility would be to leave a blank, so correspondence would be addressed to Dear Smith. Not really considered good form and, no doubt, something else the OP would find time to complain about.