Re: punctuated abbreviations // was english spelling reform

Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...> wrote:
>
> Personally, I would go by "Ms" in definite preference to "Mrs" because I
> did not take my husband's last name (as is Korean tradition).  "Mrs Lee"
> puts me in mind of my mom, before my parents got divorced, and I'm not the
> "mrs" of a Lee *grin*;
    Before Ms. became common you would have been known as "Miss Lee".
"Miss" does not mean "unmarried".  It means "not using a husband's name".
That may be either because you do not have a husband or because you have one
but do not choose to use his name.  "Mrs." means, "using a husband's name",
even if that husband has been divorced.  OTOH, what I've just described was
not universally followed even back in the pre-Ms. days.  I have heard
people who know my wife kept her maiden name call her "Mrs. Cook", which
grates on my prescriptivist nerves.  This is one reason the advent of "Ms."
was, IMHO, a good thing.  The use of two different conventions for
distinguishing "Miss" from "Mrs." mitigates what little advantage it had.

 ===========================================================================

                 Dennis Paul Himes    <>    himes@cshore.com
                   http://home.cshore.com/himes/dennis.htm
        Gladilatian page: http://home.cshore.com/himes/glad/lang.htm

Disclaimer: "True, I talk of dreams; which are the children of an idle
brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy; which is as thin of substance as
the air."                      - Romeo & Juliet, Act I Scene iv Verse 96-99

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