> how does everyone feel about "Ms"? <
A couple of current threads can be tied together for this. One thread remarked that a word was a "skin of thought" which conveys underlying ideas. Another was the role of language in adapting to cultural attitudes and behaviours from the "political correctness" strand.
I think the evolution of the past use of "Mister" and "Miss" can guide us in it's future use. (Historians please feel free to confirm alter or refute this )It could be argued that Mister has evolved to a more generic adult male title and is no longer an indication of social status. (It could be argued that the advent of the industrial revolution altered the "status quo" so to speak.) As the importance of defining class/occupation in a title has changed, so has the word.
Miss has become a generic unmarried female title, and no longer has it's place in marking the eldest female and consequestly the most eligible to be married. Perhaps this happened as such a marker was no longer considered so important that it was everpresent in a title.
I would argue that a female's marital status is now no longer such an imperative piece of information to convey that it needs to be in a title (and thus on your telephone bill, listserves, etc.), and consequestly, can be shed also.
Perhaps Mrs. could be the generic female term. or Ms. or something else. To take it a step further, are we really conveying much information in our titles anyway? It strikes me that apart from the married/unmarried female thing it's only purpose is to lend a polite form of address by not using a person's first name.
The whole caper could be dispensed with by simply considering it polite to address people by their given names.
This has the added benefit of giving people the choice to pick their own title, like Supreme Ultimate, for example
What do youse think?
