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?

I'm a travel agent and we always put Ms on tickets. Covers all eventualities and it's accepted by carriers. If we can't figure out if someone is m or f we put Dr! It's not in your passport and it makes 0 difference.

Woah. This thread has moved on a bit, soz

I have a friend who was widowed last year. She got incredibly upset at the amount of mail she received addressed to Ms by companies she had contacted after her husband's death.

you could consider that to be a clear statement if you wanted to have a chip on your shoulder. The fact that there are women partners says a whole lot more than how a particular kind of letter is addressed.

When I was a trainee, the then elite French law firm actually had no female partners and at least one partner there actually said that 'French women wouldn't be capable'. The first women partners had been made in a fair number of City firms within recent memory. Inappropriate conversations (and more) were everywhere. Even then 'Dear Sirs' was a meaningless convention, however.

My feelings exactly LynetteScavo. I would say that it was very insensitive Sunnymeg.

At work to frequently get emails addressed to "Dear Mr Lusty" but I deal a lot with foreigners. I just smile to myself and ignore it. If I get a letter FOR me (not junk) addressed to Miss/Ms/Mrs Busty, it doesn't bother me, but I will correct them when I respond. When I get cold calls asking for "Mrs Busty" (oh yeah, not married, and my mum remarried when I was 8, so "mrs busty" is my man to me!!), I respond with "I'm sorry, Mrs Busty has never lived here, and passed away a couple of years ago. Thank you, goodbye". If they can't do their research, I don't want to talk to them. :-)

kalidanger, can't you just use the initial of their first name? I would be very bemused to receive something addressed to Dr Scavo.

Mrs might be wrong
Miss might be wrong.
Ms cannot be wrong unless the person is not female.

It might not be appreciated/preferred though. No way of second guessing that and if they want to be addressed as Miss or Mrs then they should make that clear.

Lynette Can't use initial as it has to be the full name. That is in the passport and has to match.

The dear sir/madam bit is annoying. I used to do sir/madam but I got lazy and started putting sirs only when writing to a company (in my own correspondence) A neutral greeting would be better, Dear person maybe or Dear minion.

I don?t think that the British use of ?Dear Sirs? in the legal profession is functionally equivalent to the use of ?Esq.? in the US. The general use of Esq. for male and female lawyers in the US is actually the result of women insisting on it.

In the 1980s, when women began entering the legal profession in larger numbers in the US, the practice arose almost immediately to use ?Att?y? for women, while continuing to use ?Esq.? for men because older (mostly male) lawyers insisted on the different use due to the British origins of the term ?esquire? as exclusively male. Many women saw this as a devaluation of their status because Esq. had long been used as an honorific in the legal profession. But Esq. was (and is) almost never used in any other context in the US so has never had a strong masculine connotation outside the legal profession, other than at one time all lawyers were male. It is hard to imagine ?Sirs? ever being generally understood as an all-genders inclusive term.

I used to hate having to use Dear Sirs, it's disgustingly sexist and outdated. About time we women had just the one title too, whether we are married or not, too. Unless we are doctors or otherwise titled, of course.

'... if you wanted to have a chip on your shoulder'. Yeah, that right there is a statement that is typically used to put down anyone who objects to sexism (or disablism etc. etc. etc.).

All this 'don't make a fuss about X, it's trivial' is just an excuse to ignore problems. Including sexual harassment in political parties, it would appear. Actually, if you point out 'Dear Sirs' is discriminatory, it would invite people to pay more ruddy attention to inadvertent sexism, just as pointing out 'wandering hands' may invite people to take sexual harassment more seriously. Instead of taking the Shirley Williams line that some forms of sexual harassment are trivial and women should just put up with it.

Edam, yours is just as tired/predictable, 'oh changing this irrelevant thing will make people more aware of x,y or z. Oddly, it never seems to actually do that (vis, Ms)

Oh I do so love the old "chip on the shoulder" ploy! Often shortly followed by the "it's just jealousy" or "why are you so bitter?" gambits. And the "haven't you got more important things to worry about?" thrust. All so old and obvious and easy to counter, but it is nice to see them being trotted out occasionally

right seeker, so tell me how exactly do you think spending energy on changing an archaic linguistic usage is actually going to benefit anyone? are we back to the 'it will change mindsets' belief in miracles??

We haven't got fairness in language or society, desert, so how can you be led to that conclusion? Sexist language and sexism abounds. For me, language is pretty inseparable from thought.

That was one of the themes in George Orwell's "1984" - using language to shape the way that people thought.

Which proves...?

Fillyjonk, I really, really, really do not want to spend the next 20 years with whatever I write at the top of a formal letter making a political statement; which if there starts to be an alternative, it will - not to mention that the alternative will probably not take effect across the world at the same rate so you will end up with oddities like Americans writing to me as Jane Smith Esq, which does make you think they are bonkers the first few times you read it.

I genuinely do not believe that it affects anything; it is not part of an address to a person; things are changing (if slowly) without linguistic alteration being a condition precedent, and I find it very difficult to believe that such alteration would actually hasten that change, George Orwell notwithstanding.

it would just be creating a frankly irritating situation where you have to choose, in each specific case, whether old or new would be more appropriate/diplomatic/whatever.

I once wrote to a woman I didn't know personally using Ms, and she wrote back a very snooty aggressive letter saying that she was not Ms she was Mrs and wished to be addressed as such as she was married and wished her title to reflect that fact! I wrote back suggesting she be less petty. People constantly get my title wrong - you have to rise above these things.

Of course YANBU, that's standard practice. If women get offended at Ms they should sign their name as Firstname Lastname (Mrs) or Mrs Firstname Lastname. People aren't mind readers and shouldn't have to spend their time fretting about such matters, calling people to ask which title they prefer etc.

Yes, Dear Sirs, Mesdames,

When addressing a firm and signing off on behalf of one.

But as for whether a solicitor should address a female correspondent as Ms or an alternative, if you are doing work that is remotely interesting you will think tactically about what effect it will have on the recipient surely?

The point is that language does have an effect on our attitudes and our thinking. In "1984" it was used to curtail independent thinking, as the words to express dissent were removed from the vocabulary. I remember being chilled by the cleverness of it.

In the same way, if the words we use continue to assume a male dominated society, those attitudes will continue to seep into our subconscious. It is an important issue: as someone has said, just because female genital mutation is awful doesn't mean that you can't also care about other issues. It's not an "either"/"or" situation.

I don't get on my high horse about it that often - but I think saying that it has no effect is a fallacy.

lol, it depends what you call interesting. I think you'd have to be doing contentious work to be getting tactical to that extent :)

When you're signing off on behalf of a firm the question doesn't arise, you just use the firm name.

If I were to come across a letter addressed to "Dear Sirs, Mesdames' I would wonder what on earth the writer was thinking; if you are going to write half of the salutation in French why not go the whole hog and write Messieurs-Dames; sounds a lot better surely?