to address a woman in a formal letter as "Ms"?

[twattock]

Here's the problem; as a solicitor the formal way to address correspondence is "Dear sirs/your faithfully" or "Dear (insert as appropriate)/yours sincerely". But I often have to write to a woman without knowing what title she has given herself-so do I use Ms? I dont want to assume anything obviously, so I can't use Miss or Mrs, so what would people prefer?

Well there you go Sarah, not only are there several options to call a woman by, in addition to that you have a preference to precisely which one depending on circumstance. No one but your closest family and friends should surely be expected to know that.

One title for male and one for female, or even one gender neutral one, should be sufficient.

I presume we are talking about actual letters here rather than email? Because with email, in all but the most litigious of situations, I would routinely put 'Dear Firstname'. Dear Sirs looks bonkers to me on an email which is clearly addressed to [email protected] and I struggle with signing emails 'yours sincerely'. Seems to belong to another age and technology.

If you need to write a hard copy letter, I would go with Ms.

LRD- Don't know if this applies to areas other than law, but the Dear Sirs thing is generally to sign off 'yours faithfully, NameofFirm LLP'. So I would only write to 'Dear Madam' if it was a firm of solicitors with only one partner who happened to be female. If I am writing to the individual and signing off with my own name, it is Dear Mr/Ms X, yours sincerely Amanda Payne.

If gender has not been specified and I don't know the person, I dig about on the law society website to try and find out the full name if they are another solicitor. Otherwise, I sometimes write to 'Dear A Smith'

Well, I wouldn't be signing off 'name of firm', but yes, 'Dear Sir/Madam' is what I'd use if I knew they were a mix of men and women (or likely to be). If I knew they were all men, obviously I'd use Dear Sirs. But usually, I can find out who they are and what their title is.

Unfortunately the dear sirs/yours faithfully thing is one we are stuck with unless someone can come up with a gender-neutral alternative that sounds professional

We are absolutely not stuck with it. Dear Sir/Madam is absolutely fine, accurate and polite. It may not be Debretts-approved but who honestly cares about that? We do not need to be stuck with a construction which accidentally leaves out the possibility of women. I work in a very traditional industry and I would not use Dear Sirs and would challenge anyone who wanted me to. Just replace it with something sensible like Dear Sir/Madam and over time, Dear Sirs will come to seem as archaic as Mrs David Smith does.

DrJohnson - I agree. But generally in law it would be Dear Sirs/Madams (i.e plural). We have these odd rules (apologies in advance if you know all this).

If you are writing in a very formal capacity, you write to Dear Sirs and sign Yours faithfully FirmName LLP. You write 'Dear Sirs' because you are addressing all the partners in the Firm. And you are writing on behalf of your firm, so you literally sign the name FirmName LLP. Your personal contact information would need to be somewhere in the body of the letter. Personally I choose to view Dear Sirs as a gender inclusive form of address much like all US lawyers are esquire, but only because it conserves anger energy when I am busy!

If you are writing to an individual within the firm you would write Dear X, yours sincerely Amanda Payne.

What you wouldn't generally do is write Dear Sir/Madam, yours faithfully Amanda Payne. It gets drummed into you in law school that, if you haven't addressed a named individual at the start of the letter, you sign off with the name of your firm and not your own name.

I tend to regard Dear Sir/Madam as showing that they haven't bothered to research. Thirty seconds on the website would show them who the boss of my business is and my first name is not one like Hilary or Ashley that could be either. So the chances of me buying their product or keeping their cv on file reduce accordingly.

I'm with Bumbiscuits and Bugsy. I hate Ms. I'm not divorced, gay, rabidly feminist or cagey about my marital status. You only need to check my work website to see that I'm known as Miss X Surname. The X is obviously a female name, so I'd be equally miffed with "Mr."

Sometimes people see my wedding ring and call me "Mrs Surname." That feels a bit odd - it's not even my mum, it's my aunty, but I can understand it. Miss is probably technically wrong, as I'm married, but MS just makes my blood boil even though it's techically OK.

It's so much easier out of work, where I'm Mrs Marriedname.

What's wrong with using the plural then?

It's interesting that law has this convention about signing off on behalf of the firm - is that found in other professions?

Btw, I'm not divorced, gay, rabidly feminist, or cagey about my marital status either.

I prefer to be called Ms because I'm not married and I feel like Miss sounds too little girly, personally. Fine if others are happy to be miss! I would consider ms the neutral and use it if I didn't know what title was preferred. Last year giving my details joining a new gym the guy signing me up made some stupid comment that I looked too young to be a Ms! Wtf! I was 26 so not even that young anyway so I was a bit baffled by that and just think its rude to comment on the title.

Nothing wrong with using the plural LRD, I was just saying that if lawyers start doing it, it would need to be Dear Sirs/Madams, not Dear Sir/Madam. I am a lawyer, and therefore also a pedant .

But more practically, my firm's styles would have filled in Dear Sirs for me/my secretary automatically, which we would have to override. Which is a bit of a no no as it is departing from approved style guides gets you in trouble. Hence you would have to take it up with the partners. Which rather makes it ' a big thing' and a firm wide change. And that wasn't a battle I could be bothered with. I just emailed

I'm not sure about other professions. I think accountants might do it. It's often a wee bit passive aggressive. Most often seen these days in litigation, where you will attach an scanned letter to an email rather than just write an email to Dear Fred, even if you have been having argumetns on the phone with Fred every day for the last month.

Ah, right!

I guess we all get used to 'house style'.

Something I think is rather nice, is that often people email me (because I am a nobody Phd student) with 'Dear Firstname (if I may)'. And I'd email someone the same way if they were about my level, I'd met them but not written to them before. It's nice because it is informal, but you show you're not trying to be rude and can use their proper title if they let you know.

That is nice. I am contemplating a career change and would love to leave some of those rules behind!

I am one of the partners in a partnership - not a law partnership - and I still wouldn't appreciate getting a letter headed Dear Sirs. I just think the law needs to get over itself on this - it's just hiding behind "the law" as a reason not to make sensible and minimalistic changes. There are plenty of ways to write to a group of people or someone whose name you don't know or an entity without excluding women.

If it really was not appropriate to write to Dear Sir/Madam (and I can't see why that wouldn't do for all of the three above - after all if Dear Sirs can stand for a room full of women then Dear Sir/Madam can stand for a a room full of men) I would write Dear Partners. Or if it's addressed to the entity as a whole then no "dear" is needed and just "For the Attention of XYZ LLP" or "To Whom it may concern".

I fully understand about preserving your energy on this but actually I think it's quite important to challenge it.

Re the emails, I get emails which start

Gentlemen, ....

Cue quiet rage.

I think that standard practice is to address women as Ms unless there is an indication that they use another title.

But it's also why I prefer not to use Miss and be in the same category as my six year old

Interesting isn't it? The Master/Mister distinction is an age one, yet the Miss/Mrs is a status one. It smacks of the notion that women are only conferred 'adult' status on marriage.

I'm not sure about other professions. I think accountants might do it.

Having spent most of the day writing letters for accountants, I can confirm that! I get a bit twitchy addressing letters to "Dear Sirs" but it's so entrenched that I'd feel a bit daft challenging it .

I did get an email from someone in Japan the other day addressed to "myfirstname-San" which was lovely!

I profoundly don't give a fig.
The only thing I don't like is the British pronunciation of Ms. (as Muzz). That is weird.
I am supposed to Dr. myself, anyway, but never do.

Born - On the odd occasion I dealt with Japan I used to love that! It's hard isn't it, as challenging it in big firms literally means taking it to the partners - a group of largely middle aged men in most cases- and saying "You need to change this". I'd rather a female partner took it up with them as an equal and it does feel a battle which you are unlikely to win (because the whole industry does it), and which will cost you a lot professionally. Much easier to challenge if you can just quietly do your own thing without anyone noticing!

Ms. is fine. People will be offended by things if they want to be. You can't anticipate a stranger's response to what is intended to be a polite and formal mode of address. They need to man up if it upsets them.

British pronunciation of Ms. (as Muzz)

I have always pronounced it as Mizz (to rhyme with jizz)

Although I don't like being addressed by my first name, I hate the false intimacy it suggests, especially as I never use my first name and it automatically gets my back up.

I am married and prefer Ms, I also preferred it before I was married. When people are addressing me formally, my marital status is of no importance. Ms = Mr for me, it's formal and also limits this sharing of personal marital status.

I'm happy to call anyone whatever they like but if not already specified, I wouldn't call a woman over 18 Miss as it seems juvenile - or Mrs because its rude to presume a woman is married.

As for the Dear Sirs... I get these work emails from law firms, and often sent from women, addressed only to me! There are women on my board and I'm a woman (my email is [email protected]). This may be how it's been done for ever but it needs to change soon - totally outdated.

I say 'mizz', and I know some people say 'muzz'.

But then, some people say 'missus' and others 'mizziz', so it's not as if there's uniformity for Mrs either.

I'm "Dr" and hate being anything other than that because I hate people knowing whether I have married or not. So when I am writing to someone and do not know their title I just, as has been suggested, stick with what I know to be true rather than guess, first name and last name, i.e. John/Jane Doe.

Here's an aside: anybody read Gone With the Wind? The way they referred to Belle Watling (the town's bad lady) was interesting. The characters would stumble over Miss Watling and Mrs Warming (it being unthinkable to just call her Belle) and get confused. What I took away from this is that the difference was not the piece of paper & ring aspect, but the knowledge of men that was the dividing line.

Haven't done any further research on what social mores were in the 1860s, but i don't doubt Margaret Mitchell's interpretation: she was writing this in the 1920s, having heard first-hand accounts of the time.

Not 'Warming'!!! damned phone...