Dear Sirs

[Suzanne12]

Is this an acceptable way to start an email that will be received by either a man or a woman? Would you say something if a colleague used this term to send an email to a generic inbox?

Yabu - it's fine
Yanbu - it's not acceptable anymore

YANBU I've actually never heard that one before, it's not good. I think most people would use 'Dear Sir or Madam.' Even if a lot of people are copied in, each person reading it is an individual, so not using the plurals (which would sound a bit funny) is probably ok.

@SignOnTheWindow yep. Invisible Women brings all the studies together beautifully.

I personally like 'Dear Sirs/Mesdames' when addressing more than one person.

In the same way it is in other languages, the ones that have gender agreement routinely use the masculine plural for a mixed plural, even if it is only 1 man.

I can't speak for other languages but German is working very hard to get rid of the convoluted way of addressing a mixed- or unknown-gender group. And they have introduced the "gender star" because of the way the language works. And lots of people are actually making a tiny pause to denote it in speech. And it works pretty well.

Language does matter. Policeman. Well when i was a girl i always wanted to be a lady policeman. It took my parents a long time to introduce me to policewoman (ok) and police officer (perfect). So to fireman->firefighter etc etc. And people scoff but if you're designing safety equipment for firemen or policemen as opposed to firefighters or police officers you may possibly forget that women have different requirements.

@nakedavengerreturns. Because historically, traditionally, companies were usually owned by men. I’m all for finding a new greeting for an entity that isn’t Dear Sirs, but I am not going think badly of anyone who addresses such correspondence in that way.

I don't think it's anyone's business whether I'm married or not just because I might want to apply for a Next catalogue, but if you're happy with that

But surely they are just asking for your choice of title? Not every "Miss" is single just as not every "Mrs" is married.

For all those saying it addresses the firm, maybe I should have clarified that the email was internal so surely it would be strange the firm to be addressing itself. It was sent from a member of the legal team to a finance inbox that could be dealt with by any one of around 20 people both men and women. There was no need for formality as it was just a simple internal request. I honestly think that's beside the point though. An organisation is not male so addressing it "Dear Sirs" is still inappropriate. I guess my point is that I thought it was being better recognised in workplaces that terms like this shouldn't be used anymore especially when there are plenty of alternatives. "Hi Team" would have been fine or even no address, just the request would have been better than only addressing male staff. It annoys me that no one has challenged it so it looks like I will have to be the one to say something.

@Deanetta well clearly now they aren't 'exclusively' owned by men. How hard is it to add '/madam' to reflect reality?

I always use the test of 'does it work the other way?' So if a letter was addressed to 'Dear Madams' most men in a company wouldn't be very happy.

Women make up 51% of the population yet some are happy to be treated as a subset of men.

It doesn't feel appropriate to use terms such as Dear Sirs now when most companies are far more diverse. A previous public sector organisation I worked at had correspondence addressed to the board using 'Dear Sirs' and yet there were 6 women and one man on the board. The correct term then should have been 'Dear Madams'. Both feel very old fashioned though.

Good luck @Suzanne12 - if you can position it as "this is old fashioned" rather than "I, a lady, am offended" it might work.

"Most email I send to are fairly formal and contain official documents though." @terkwoys (love the user name) I think that actually makes it worse not better?? The fact that "formal" and "official" places and types are still the most sexist has an effect on us all. I once had my CRB delayed because the police/criminal records people didn't believe I'd included all previous names. Apparently because I'd put "Ms" as my title it meant I must be divorced and must have changed my name when getting married/divorced.

So these things can have real results when old fashioned views are in place.

My email address is first name.surname @ company name, I'd expect email to use my name or 'Dear All' for group email etc. A letter, where you don't know the name of the person, Dear Sir/Madam, although its not exactly difficult these days to find out the name of the relevant person, so Dear Sir/Madam smacks of laziness or mass mail sending.

Because it would have to be Dear Sirs/Madams, which doesn't exactly sound right either! Personally I would rather use something like 'Dear Partners' if you have established it's a LLP or 'Dear Directors' if a company. But if I started doing that I would look very weird and not set up the right tone with my correspondent... potentially losing business. So why take the risk?

But back to the OPs original query and subsequent update... using Dear Sirs is weird in that context. I would probably have used 'Hi all' :)

But do cut the sender some slack.. it's how he would have been trained to start correspondence, and perhaps hasn't used common sense to change it in this case.

It’s not standard in my industry. It happens very rarely, and whenever it does happen people are gobsmacked and the email gets passed around as an example of someone being a sexist dinosaur.

I’m sure there was a poster on here who changed some kind of big policy document so it replaced all the references to policemen (or whatever it was) with policewomen, after being told that “policeman” is standard and gender neutral. It wasn’t police it was something else I can’t remember.

I use Dear Gentlebeing

@Reginabambina - it may be standard but it absolutely isn’t gender neutral. That makes absolutely no sense. I think it’s important to call these things out politely and firmly every time they happen. That way callers/senders may think twice the next time. I often have the are you Mrs or Miss question and suggest to them that they’ve forgotten something.

YANBU.

I remember watching Star Trek as a little girl, being delighted that there was a female captain, and then completely confused that she was referred to as 'sir' - in a clumsy attempt to show that the future wasn't sexist. Even then I knew that calling the male characters 'ma'am' would have been treated as ludicrous. And that you wouldn't get rid of sexist attitudes that way, just like hypothetically deciding to call both boys and girls 'boys' wouldn't be a non-sexist thing to do.

Lexical asymmetries matter. They influence the way we think. Using male-coded terms to refer to women isn't a solution, and it isn't a neutral thing to do either. It's yet more male-as-default.

My exh wanted a loan for a car.
He addressed his letter..
Dear Mr bank manager(!!!!)

I still rather like 'Darling fascist bully boy'...

No getting away from it though - it's still making sexist assumptions!

I would still use the terms Dear Sir or Madam in a formal letter/email. It may be classed as archaic by some people these days, but it is a traditional way of address,and sad that some people wan't to do away with this. Bringing the term sexism into everything now, is really quite ridiculous.

It wasn’t police it was something else I can’t remember.
Not sure if it was me, @AngryRedhead - but when i left my company a couple of years ago (after 20 years) the last thing i was asked to do, as a native English speaker, was asked to check through the company handbook. I wrote large chunks of it anyway, as well as a manual of How To Do Brefugee's Job. And i changed all the male references to female.

Only one person spotted it before they were all printed and my argument was there was roughly a 50/50 split and it would take too much time to change it all back. So they printed it. i think I've told that story here before.

When it's been company internal in the past I've not answered a "Dear Sir" and waited for the complaint. At which time it's easy to point out that in a company with many women, and with an intranet so it's easy to find a name and photo to match of the person you're writing to, there's no excuse to mistake me for a man.

@Miriel

She didn't like it or encourage it though.

"Ma'am" is acceptable in a crunch, but I prefer "Captain."

I agreed with her that Captain was a much better address - non-gender specific and immediately conveyed she was the one in charge of everything.

I can't think of any situation where I would send a group email without being able to clarify further who the recipients are e.g. Dear customers/members/subscribers/residents/colleagues.

Yabu its standard use when writing to generic emails where the gender of the receiver is unknown, also used in formal letter writing. So much better than the "to whom it may concern" which some people use.

It may have been the standard in the 50s. I'm 59 and we were taught to use 'Dear Sir or Madam' /yours faithfully for formal letter writing.
There's no compelling reason for this outmoded form to have persisted into the 21st century.

@returnofthecat I didn't remember rhat part! I was very young at the time. A rewatch may be in order I agree, Captain is much better.

"Dear Sir or Madam", obviously.

Sexist & very old fashioned.

Hello would be fine.