Re: punctuated abbreviations // was english spelling reform

 --- Dennis Paul Himes <himes@...> wrote: >
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.
>
i find it amusing seeing how my mother's name gets
treated in france. as she chose to keep her maiden
name rather than plump for my father's charming
surname ( butt ), she is Ms Amanda Finlay. in france,
this means she gets post addressed to her as Mlle
Amanda FINLAY, which implies that she's substantially
younger than her 54 years . . .

bn

=====
bnathyuw | landan | arR
stamp the sunshine out | angelfish
your tears came like anaesthesia | phèdre

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