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 ?

Used to see it on letters when I first started work in the eighties. Generally older staff though.

Many many years ago I worked in a nearly all male environment. Any CVs with a covering letter saying "Dear Sir" were instantly filed in the bin.

Weirdly I was thinking about this the other day as something that I never see any more. When I started in office jobs in the early 2000s there was a generation of older, mainly secretarial, women, who included Mrs in their email signature.

To me it always seemed quite a quaint generational thing. But as that generation have retired the practice died out. I’m intrigued to hear it’s making a comeback!

If it's a formal update or has external stakeholders then I don't consider it as informal, but just pinging emails to internal colleagues od think more of a text than a letter level of formal

because, unlike on MN, most women actually don't care 😂and are not so obsessed with the married/ not married/ divorced or whatever nonsense.

"Miss" feels weird for some reason. The only time I have ever noticed "miss" is when a primary school kid talks to or about a teacher.

Yes odd if you’re not all going around formally addressing each other as Mrs X and Ms Y, like the cast of Are You Being Served

If it's older ladies I can confirm it's what we were taught in school/college for signatures in a professional capacity. The rationale being that unless you provided your title the recipient would simply reply Dear Sir or Dear Mr X. Sounds very old-fashioned now of course.

But outside of education I think most professions / workplaces just send emails “hi first name”…

Ms - all the way!! Married or unmarried.

As I said previously, working in a professional setting in London for 20 years I never once came across this.

The thousands of workers in this multi-national corporation would all sign-off an email with name, surname and job title, and qualifications if where applicable.

No marital status ever was included.

We’re discussing formal written communication not what you wear into work.

But you do you.

Not at my current school because we're all first names, but in a previous one I regularly signed emails off as Mrs Doe because that was my school name and when emailing students, the appropriate one to use. If emailing a parent for the first time, the sign off would usually be Jane (aka Mrs Doe) at the previous school.

In a life before teaching - and before switching to a last name that wasn't also a male first name - I regularly received emails that started with, 'Dear Mr Thomas'. The assumption seemed to be that Jane Thomas was male. Jane Doe doesn't have the same issue.

I’ve never seen this before. I haven’t even changed my name at work, and I’ve been married two years! I have a rank at work, though, so always have a title through that. I couldn’t be “Mrs insert rank and surname!

same here. I call myself what I want to be called.

I always put Mrs J. Smith on my customer emails and letters. I don't want my them googling me or attempting to find me on FB.

My work email is JSmith @ etc so they never get to find out my first name.

I work in several schools so im pretty used to surnames and titles being used so I dont notice it. Although not often on email signatures. Im not sure most of us have more than our name and job title on email signatures.

I am actually the name that goes on a lot of the complaints and exclusions letters I do often just put title surname for those. Its not that I want to flag my marital status. Its just it is a formal process and i sort of want to separate my fist name put it. I don't really want an irate vexatious complaintant having any illusions that there is anything other than a very formal conversation happening. But maybe I need to rethink it.

It is a bit odd. Although my email defaulted to ”Mrs Lucinda J Smith” for months.

We were sent round a form to fill in with title, first name, middle initial, surname on so I filled it out with that info.

It took forever to get it back to “Lucy Smith”.

In a formal context, I’m always glad when people make their title known. I’m applying for jobs at the moment and when the contact’s name for the application is given as ‘Sophie Jones’ it feels weird writing ‘Dear Sophie’ but then you can’t write ‘Dear Mrs Jones’ as she might be a ‘Miss’. It feels like a minefield.

It is to avoid confusion and avoids confusion by identifying a preferred title. Society has given women choices on how they like to be addressed whereas the vast majority of men are just plain Mr. I prefer Mrs, some like Miss and others like Mx. Why is it odd?

some people do this because they don't want to put the whole pronoun he/she stuff

Never seen this, and don’t really understand why you would need to do it. I have a gender neutral name and don’t use pronouns or title because I think it’s entirely irrelevant to people who don’t know me whether I’m male or female. I certainly don’t think my marital status is relevant to my role

@OneBreezyHelper

If it's unprofessional, then so are wedding rings.

But you're not comparing like with like: wedding rings symbolise your marital status, which is a personal designation. Your marital status has no bearing on your professional life.

I have suppliers in Germany who have a much more formal workplace (apart from more casual dress code) They are all Herr or Frau when talking about each other.
Could it be cultural or maybe they've worked in other places where it is rhe norm.

I just find Mrs a bit cringe in general I don’t know why. I didn’t change my surname when I got married and sometimes I get a letter with Mrs. (My husbands surname ) and it irks me. It’s just the fact that Mr. doesn’t indicate marriage status so to me it’s old fashioned. Why should women declare what their marriage status is in a signature especially at work. Cringe is right.

Not something I have noticed between colleagues, however, customers seem to insist on replying Dear Ms Willow instead of just using my full name or even just a first name would be acceptable. My real name is unique but obviously female, yet I have been misgendered by people on occasion. Doesn’t bother me really, it isn’t like it matters in the grand scheme of things! I only ever use titles if the customer doesn’t give me an option - mainly because if you inadvertently misgender them they seem to take huge offence!

@JustTryingToBeMe

It is to avoid confusion and avoids confusion by identifying a preferred title. Society has given women choices on how they like to be addressed whereas the vast majority of men are just plain Mr. I prefer Mrs, some like Miss and others like Mx. Why is it odd?

But you don't need to use someone's marital status to address them in a professional context so it's superfluous. Leaving aside the feminism element for a moment: it just makes no sense that this comes into the discussion.

You wouldn't introduce someone in a work context as "Mrs Smith" (unless they were a teacher). It would be "Jane Smith", or possibly "Dr Jane Smith".

I could see how it could make more sense if Jane Smith were applying for a mortgage or switching utilities (even then I would argue that it's irrelevant but I can see why people would do it).

But if you went into a work meeting and introduced people as "Mrs Smith, Miss Brown and Ms Thompson" it would just sound ridiculous.