To find "Mrs" in a work email signature a bit cringe

[Whyohwhyohwhy26]

Just that really, is this a new thing or I'm just noticing it more nowadays that some female colleagues have Mrs first name last name on their email signatures where the norm is just names + job title etc. I've never seen a male colleague's email signature be "Mr X" and i'd find that equally odd to be honest. Unless it's a professional title like Dr or Professor AIBU to think putting your personal title in an email signature a bit cringe ?

My first name can be male or female so, on any email I send to someone I don't know I put "Mrs" in brackets after my name.

I don't think it's "cringe" at all and is considerably less toe-curling than "she/her".

What conventions? Where are you are you getting your information from? Why does it make your “flesh creep” when a man refers to himself as Mr? What’s all this about entitlement?

@Whyohwhyohwhy26 Mrs isn't a professional title.

I’m genuinely perplexed. Are you referencing Esquire type stuff

Mrs and Miss have had their time, and need to be relegated to the history books. Titles that denote your marital status should have no place in the workplace or modern society. They’re irrelevant.

We can throw the concept of a title signifying marital status without getting rid of Mrs or Miss - that idea has nothing to do with the titles themselves. I also think the idea that everyone has a title should be tossed in the bin.

Mrs and Miss only became used to signify marital status with cultural pressures in the late Victorian and early Edwardian period with the societal push that everyone has and should properly be referred to by a title. Until then, most didn't.

We have centuries of women using Miss, Ms, Mrs, and Mm regardless of marital status before that. The only traditional title that signified anything to do with marriage was Wdd for widow. All of the titles have had baggage that has shifted over time (at some times and places, using Miss for an adult was to call her a prostitute, while at the same time in other places, it was mainly for schoolmistresses). Sadly no title for women can get away from that history, it's why we're mostly stuck with titles that aren't even a full word.

This just reads as more leftist clap trap aimed at breaking down the family unit and western society.

I thought Ms was a relatively modern convention. Have women really been using it for centuries? What did it mean?

@Marmalademorning You mean not using the title "Mrs"?

Mrs, Ms and Ms are all contractions of Mistress, which is the grammatically feminine version of Master, showing the remnants of English having its roots in gendered languages, particularly French and Latin (where the equivalent feminine endings woukd be -trice and -trix.)

But as TiredShadows says, there's a long social history behind whichever title you choose to use, which means none of them is neutral as Mr is for men.

I am long time married and I hate it when correspondence addresses me as 'Ms'. I also prefer to have them use my husbands initials as I'm not divorced or widowed. Perhaps the women who do this wish to make it clear that this is their preferred form of address.[
Men do not have the need to do this. Must be easier on the conscience if they want a little fun on the side!!!
Old fashioned? Out of kilter with the modern WOKE world? YEP and happy to be so.

I don't have it in my email signature but sometimes add it in professional correspondence. I work in a field where most people are Dr and I am not. I like to make it clear I'm not laying claim to a qualification I don't actually hold, otherwise it feels like lying by omission.

Have you ever tried getting the gas company or whatever to call you Mrs DH Initials Surname, rather than Mrs Granddama Surname? I would imagine that'd be difficult to organise. I think the era when that was normal was before all that stuff got automated.

It is not woke to insist on being addressed by your own name rather than hanging on the coat tails of someone you happened to marry.

I find it rather depressing that you prefer to be know as Mrs Peter Smith, as if all your validation comes from the man you are married to.

ETA my mother (married 56 years) has always insisted that she is Mrs HerName HerMarried name. She would have preferred to have kept her maiden name but said that it was just "not what you did in those days".

Even my grandmothers (born 1911 and 1915) preferred to be addressed as Mrs TheirName MarriedSurname rather than by their husbands’ initials or first names.

I don’t know what era that poster is coming from!

Maybe it's a pushback from the ridiculous fashion of putting pronouns in signatures these days?

I'm Mrs, but never use it internally. Some government/legal organisations I deal with externally I do, but not in emails, only on paperwork where title is expected.

That’s interesting — I didn’t know that. I thought Ms. came out of the 60s/70s feminist movement, and therefore was something relatively recent in terms of history. Anyway, nowadays Ms is seen as the nearest equivalent to Mr, and the only title you can’t determine marital status from.

I’d find it really demeaning and insulting to be referred to by husband’s name, as if my own name and identity was somehow the same as his. I kept my birth surname when I got married, and in my circles/culture that was seen as being radical (14 years ago)!

I use Mrs....as my work email - work inna school and the Headteacher doesn't want parents calling us by our Christian names which they would ignore we signed our emails off with them.

Nothing to do with wanting people to know l am married

The U.K is so odd this way. Why is it so taboo to call people by their Christian names in a school setting? We always called our teachers by their first names in primary; so did our parents. No big deal.

So why not use Ms?

Nothing wrong with it.

I’ve noticed it became a thing after it became common for pronouns to be on the email signature (he/his she/her they/them)
It was almost like in retaliation against pronouns

Because l am Mrs!