Courtesy Titles

Recently, I read an article in my local paper about courtesy titles, which I found rather interesting.

The main point of the article was that our society has become increasing less courteous in recent years and the writer focused on the decreasing use of courtesy titles referring to people in newspaper articles.

In the article he stated:

"A woman who prefers "Mrs." might be offended if we call her "Ms." Sometimes we write about a husband and wife in the same story. It may seem odd if we call her "Ms.", but calling her "Mrs." would be presumptuous if we didn’t ask her preference."

Precisely. And this is a pet peeve of mine.

Back in the 1960s, feminists protested against courtesy titles because they believed it was unfair that such titles distinguished between single and married women, when there was only one title for all adult men. To remedy this problem, they urged the adoption of "Ms" as a third female title, that could be used by all women, regardless of marital status.

Though the protest was a understandable one, I believe their focus was wrong and that they opened up an even bigger can of worms with "Ms". Now, instead of having two titles for adult females, we have three. "Ms" was shunned by many traditional women, and, in practice, it is used mainly by single and divorced women. And, as the writer pointed out, journalists must discover which title a woman prefers, lest the woman in question be offended.

With men, it's business as usual -- "Mr" for everyone, no problem.

The feminists got it wrong because they focused on marital status, instead of age.

That is, a little boy is referred to as "Master". When he is an adult, he becomes "Mister" (Mr.) and stays "Mr.", regardless of his marital status.

Instead of inventing a third title for women, I think they'd have done better to reserve "Miss" for little girls, and "Mrs" for all adult women, regardless of marital status. Miss goes with Master, as Mrs goes with Mr. Very simple, and less likely to offend traditionalists, plus it has the added advantage of being even-handed for both sexes.

After Googling this topic online, I found that up until the beginning of the 19th century, it was quite common to use these titles in this fashion; that many adult women called "Mrs" had never been married. So, there is a precedent for my suggestion.

Thoughts?