Choose the Proper Title: Miss, Mrs. and Ms.

Our expert tutor Susan Clark noted that TutorZ does not support the Ms. in the list of female titles. She found the choices of Miss and Mrs. limiting.

Despite the risk of coming across as sexist, but in fact because I am from Central Europe, where this distinction does not exist, I admit I was unfamiliar with this female title “Ms”. When I responded to Susan that the title “Ms.” may be only a technicality, I received the following decisive response, which is so good I publish it here.  Susan wrote:

Not a technicality!

You may suppose that, logically, one can be only married or unmarried, by law.

What about someone who disagrees with state marriage contracting laws, and therefore is “married” by intent but refuses to be married by law, for example?

Then there is the matter of how a professional person wishes to be represented publicly. Should my students know prior to contracting whether I am married or not? In my view, that is not their business.

In past centuries, it was very important for men and courts to know whether a female were virginal. Thus the distinction “Miss” and “Mrs.”. The distinction does not exist for a man, who is always “Mr.”, regardless of his level of sexual experience. In the past, if a woman were not virginal, she might be unacceptable for marriage, for example. And a virginal woman would be considered legally the property of her father, thus lacking the rights of adult persons.

The outcomes of such bizarre descriptors included that young women branded as “witches” in Salem, MA in the 17th century could and often did receive the death penalty, without a trial. Or, to be precise, the “trial” involved being held under water. If the body floated or sunk, she was innocent or guilty – I don’t remember which was which, so to say! At that time, young women had no legal standing before a court, so could not defend themselves from the “witch” charge. By contrast, on one occasion, a man was charged with being a “witch”. Because he had legal standing, he sued his accuser for defamation, won the case, and stopped the entire program of sacrificing young, innocent girls in and beyond Salem, MA.

As you are no doubt aware, for many centuries, female herbalists in Europe who knew how to cure medical conditions by using natural remedies were called “witches” and were burnt at the stake, because the powerful banksters and rulers did not want people cured. The rulers preferred to cull the human population for their own financial benefit; thus, the knowledge of these herbalists represented a danger to their assets. A laborer’s work would be stolen in part from him/her for the banksters. But an older, disabled, and/or sickly person was considered useless to those who’d take a cut of the labor. For population reduction, then, the herbalists’ remedies were denied people.

Anyway, it is important that clients receive the information they need, and not be allowed to discriminate against tutors based on false presumptions based on marital status, age, etc..

Cheers,
Susan?

To complete Susan’s elaboration I like to define the title “Ms”. Wikipedia describes the title Ms as “the last name or full name of a woman, intended as a default form of address for women regardless of their marital status.”

Being a tutoring company I should mention when to use the other titles.  “Mr” is used for the male gender. There is only one form here.  Females have more choices.  If the woman is married then she is entitled to carry the “Mrs”.  Unmarried women choose “Miss”.  Look at the chart to the right. It’s a decision tree enabling you to choose the proper title for Mr, Mrs, Miss.

?Having been enlightened by Susan and convinced about its importance TutorZ has changed our software to include the title “Ms” to our choices ?for the tutor profile.

Once again thank you Susan for your insight.

Susan or any other writing tutors can be found on the writing search
page in Kissimmee, FL.