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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhuxi!houxm!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uicsl!preece
From: preece@uicsl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Miss/Mrs/Ms - (nf)
Message-ID: <3055@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Sep-83 05:39:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.3055
Posted: Fri Sep 30 05:39:09 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 3-Oct-83 06:21:32 EDT
Lines: 15

#R:ihuxl:-60500:uicsl:16400023:000:723
uicsl!preece    Sep 30 00:52:00 1983

	I am tired of this discussion, what I want to know is why does it
	matter 	what sex you are, let alone what marital status?  Why Mr/Ms?
	Why any stupid honourific at all?
----------
It shouldn't make any difference what sex the addressee is, in most cases,
but we don't have a sex-free honorific. The honorific is useful mostly
in cases where you don't know the person you're writing to; it makes the
salutation less abrupt without trampling on the recipient's propriety.
"Dear John Smith" sounds wrong (like a computer-generated letter),
"Dear John" is presumptious if you don't know him, so "Dear Mr. Smith"
provides a middle ground. It would be nice to have a gender-free
version, but we don't, so we're stuck with it.