The Mrs

I would expect a German academic to address you as “Mrs. Dr. Hargittai”– :-)

I only call my (Dutch) zweetie “Mejuffrouw Doctor Zweetie” on special occasions, and especially only from a safe distance.

What are these persons thinking?

The whole Dr./Prof./Mr./Mrs./Ms. title thing is such a confused mess that there’s no way to know what title to use with someone you’ve never met. For example, I know several PhDs who are opposed to using the title “Dr.” for anything other than a medical doctor.

I think what the world really needs is an all-purpose, generic, gender-neutral title. I propose “Yo,” as in:

Yo, Eszter,

Professor so-and-so suggested I get in touch with you….

This title makes no assumption about the gender, marital status, profession, or education level of the addressee, and gives the recipient the opportunity to take equal opportunity offense no matter what the particulars of the situation.

My rule at conferences (or at talks elsewhere, etc) is to assume until told otherewise that any academic you are introduced to is a faculty member. You can’t go wrong.

My male senior colleague is a Professor while I’m a Mrs. Perhaps not being a full professor is what’s preventing me from being considered a Prof.

At least at my university, that would be very surprising. I don’t know how my fellow students address our profs in private e-mails, of course, but I do know that in class, teachers are nearly always addressed as “Professor” regardless of their status or gender – and I’ve never heard anyone call a professor “Mr.” or “Mrs.”. Sir or ma’am are common, though.

Two random pieces of information.

In France, one addresses a formal letter to “Monsieur” or “Madame” with no name; titles other than that are quite rare (at least, that’s what I was taught as business usage).

In the South, Miss Firstname is a friendly, but definitely deferential, form of address. It is less class-based than most other titles, but is a very respectful way to address a woman.

I looked for a long time like a grad student, and students, including grad students in other departments, frequently assumed I was, and changed their behaviour noticably when they discovered I wasn’t (not, usually, from me). When I worked as a Professor in London (in Education, where grad students are frequently older)no-one who didn’t know would address me as either Professor or Dr. because it was entirely possible that I was neither (a kind of reverse of Kieran’s principle).

I do get emails (but never letters) to Mr. Brighouse reasonably often, even from people who want to get at my expertise and know my position (e.g., most often, journalists). I suspect that if there is no awareness of Ms, then Mrs seems more respectful than Miss, if those are the options (i.e., I suspect addressing you as Mrs is the equivalent of addressing me as Mr, whereas addressing you as Miss would be talking down to you in a way that it is not possible to talk down to a man).

An aside — my pet peeve with the feminist movement was the adoption of “Ms.” It seems to me that advocating the pervasive use of “Mrs.” would have been more effective, and funnier.

In the South, Miss Firstname is a friendly, but definitely deferential, form of address. It is less class-based than most other titles, but is a very respectful way to address a woman

In my childhood it was the same in Wales, certainly among the older (but now dead) people we knew. Mr. Firstname too.

I call everyone Professor unless they’ve told me to call them by their first name. In an academic context, of course. For all I know it may be appropriate for me to call the cashier Dr, but in that circumstance I’m going to use ‘ma’am’ or ‘miss’.

And yes, Miss Firstname is a polite way of addressing a lady in the South, but I had always considered that any professional title supercedes its use.

I am an Associate Professor with a doctorate in Norway, but my Norwegian title is “førsteamanuensis” (there will be a prounounciation competition later.) Assistant Professors are titled “amanuensis”. The word “Professor” in Norway refers only to people who are full or chaired professors. In Sweden and in, I think, Denmark, it is the same thing. Moreover, the title Dr. is in Norwegian and Swedish reserved for physicians.

So, for a Scandinavian unfamiliar with English-language academic titles, using Mrs. can seem the safest alternative. (Then again, Norwegians and Swedes tell risque jokes in official settings, something not recommended on American campuses.)

I wouldn’t get too bothered about it – remembering Dan Dennetts joke about the atrophying effect of becoming a tenured professor, I would, in fact, see it as a complement. From a Norwegian.

As someone who as often been on the sending end of such e-mails (contacting individuals for interviews or possible articles) I have found you can’t go wrong by addressing everyone as Dr. _________. If they hold doctorates, great; if not, they are generally flattered by the assumed elevation in prestige. Even after I’m corrected, I often still refer to non-doctorate holders as “Dr.”

That’s been the trend in English, historically. Mister used to be reserved for those of the highest status, but now even pixel-stained wretches such as me are called “Mr.” And earlier, we lost the thou/you distinction because the Elizabethans decided it was better to flatter even the stable boy by calling them “you.”

So I find Dr. Hargittai’s experience quite puzzling. Why go out of your way to presume a less than optimal status?

We’ve been doing

Meanwhile, “sir” and “ma’am” are now almost exclusively used by service workers to get the attention of customers. I don’t think I’ve ever heard either of those used in a friendly way.

Of course “Comrade” is a nice egalitarian option…

I’m probably guilty of calling people Mr. or Mrs. when I should call them by their honorarium. Unless I know that they went eight fricken years to Evil Medical School. Then I call them doctor.

I found that as a graduate student I started to get emails addressed as either Dr. or Professor, but I think most of these originated from sources that found my email address through conferences or proceedings. I suspect this is policy, made on the assumption that you’ll never annoy someone by attributing a `higher’ position to them than they actually hold. I also taught a couple of courses, and had a hard time stopping the students from calling me Dr. (particularly odd, after telling them I hadn’t finished yet) or Prof. (more understandable in context).

As a point of reference, though, I have very seldom had an email of the type you describe addressed as Mr. I tend to get Dr./Prof. from people who don’t know me and my name from those who do….

Somewhat related — these days I often deal with medical professionals. When meeting people in this context there is often a bit of a labelling dance, this person is an MD, that one a PhD, and this other one an MD/PhD. I guess this is sometimes useful. I did have the amusing experience recently of a quite junior (i.e., like me) MD on a project first addressing me as Dr., then exclaiming `oh, you’re a PhD?’. After which he addressed me by my first name. Until shortly later when he exclaimed `oh, you’re a mathematician?’ after which he went back to calling me Dr., which is psychologically interesting if nothing else.

While I have never had the conference experience you describe, I get addressed by students all the time as Ms. S, or Mrs S or Miss S. And like you it drives me a bit nuts. Its not that I care about the title, but I would like an acknowledgement of equal status. This is more the case now that I am tenured, and though I look younger than my age, am not that young.

I think there are a number of things going on. First, I do think students have an unarticulated assumption that professors are male — there was a NYT piece a little while ago on Saul Kripke, who was described as looking just as you would expect a philosophy professor to look (I thought: I look nothing like that). Second, especially younger students have a bit of a transition problem from high school. There, most of their teachers are likely female, and they presumably call them ‘Ms’ or ‘Mrs’. This does not explain the professional correspondence though. I will say that when I have received professional queries, I have always been addressed as Prof. or Dr.

Amusingly, I have the opposite experience in person. Although I am older than average for my position (I didn’t start university until 24 years of age) people consistently seem to put my age at about 8 years younger than I am (it was a lot less accurate before I had a few gray hairs!). In person, I get a lot of exchanges like `are you a masters or phd student?’, ‘post-doc.’, ‘oh, sorry.’ (I don’t really understand the apology part, either). It probably doesn’t help that as a post-doc you often don’t have an obvious departmental web presence, etc.

An interesting dilemma that I have faced on many occasions, since I am both a graduate student and a faculty spouse (though at different institutions). When I’m wearing my student hat, I generally address all faculty members as “Professor.” In social situations, I address my husband’s colleagues by first name.

It gets weird when there is some sort of overlap, as when someone I knew socially (and was on a first name basis with) gave a brown bag lunch lecture attended by my fellow students. I “solved” the problem by not addressing him by name at all when I asked a question.

In general, I consider “professor” to be both a social role *and* a professional title, much like the way that “captain” is both a rank and a role (one can be the captain of a ship, but not hold the military rank of captain). If you are a student in a college-level (or above) class, then you should address the instructor as “Professor So-and-so,” regardless of the instructor’s actual status, until directed otherwise by the instructor–my experience is that most instructors who do not yet hold the title of “Professor” will simply say, “Oh just call me ‘Firstname’.”

Another oddity: I am currently taking Russian language classes. Russian teachers are most properly addressed by first name and patronymic. My previous teacher told us to just call her by her first name, but my current teacher has not done so. However, I don’t recall her ever providing her patronymic, and no one in the class ever addresses her by name. It’s kind of a “hey you!” thing.

I wonder if much of the confusion stems from the lack of an appropriate title for junior faculty with PhDs. I find professor mildly pretentious and where I was trained, only the old faculty, male or female preferred that title. I used to get irritated at the sex-based difference in address, something I don’t think Eszter is imagining. But I don’t view Mrs. as derogatory, in general.

That goes for you, too, Eszter. But wouldn’t you prefer an honorarium to an honorific?

As Jacob alluded to, there is an inverted snobbery at some universities (e.g. Harvard, the University of Chicago) wherein it is considered infra dig to refer to faculty as “Professor”, or as “Doctor” for anyone other than an M.D. Thus non-medical male faculty are always “Mr.”; non-medical female faculty could present problems in knowing what form of address to use (Hanna Gray is “Mrs. Gray”, but not everyone’s marital status, or preference regarding “Ms.” is known).

As a student on the west coast, we referred to all the faculty as Professor, even the one eternally-ABD-lecturer in his hawaiian shirts. Since I moved to the South, grad students have generally called faculty by their first name (except for Nobel winners, department chairs, and a few other very-senior types, at least partially driven by personal respect). Undergrads are pretty mixed in their forms of address.

To give a counterpoint to rfs’s post, I regularly hear “Miss Firstname” – it’s how parents around here encourage their children to refer to adult female family friends (regardless of age or marrital status – my wife is Miss C, my son’s sunday school teachers are Miss T and Miss B).

It’s not the first time casual academic sexism has been covered on Crooked Timber.

“As a southerner and a professor at a southern university, I can testify that in my experience calling anyone “Miss Firstname” is not actually a common practice outside of Margaret Mitchell novels, and that anyone who does so is being extraordinarily condescending, on purpose.”

Where in the South are you? I’ve lived in the South all my life (born in LA, family in MS and AR, college in AL, live in TN) and I hear it all the time, although not so much as when I was growing up.

In my department, Professor is the second-rank term since it was possible, in the past, to be hired and tenured without a doctorate. So we speak of Professor So-and-so as opposed to Dr. Such-and-such, to distinguish between faculty members who don’t or do have their Ph.D.

But I do find that new students tend to call me “Miss” or “Mrs” while addressing my much-younger male colleague by his academic title. In their case it seems to be a knee-jerk holdover from their high school experience. And the number of times it’s been assumed that I’m the secretary when people stop by the department office? Too numerous to count.

Maybe the use of titles are field specific. Is the professor title commonly used or expected in the humanities? I find the incessant use of “professor” on CT amusing. (Okay, I understand readership is growing. Daily!) In the sciences it just doesn’t seem that common, at least not among colleagues. There are always pesky undergrads who also wash dishes hoping for a name on a paper.

rfs- Ahhhh, Virginia, that explains it. Down here, we call that “the North”. (Of course, back in south LA, we called everything above I-30 “the North.”) Must be a regional thing. We also had quite a few “Mister firstnames”- Mister Sonny (husband of Miss Karen), Mister Boyd (husband of Miss Kay), and so forth; I never heard it used in a condescending fashion.

That being said, I have never heard it used in a university setting.

A fascinating discussion — my wife, an assistant professor in her late 30s, is still struggling with how to gently correct 18-year-old students who automatically address her by her first name.

As a journalist, I always address academics of any rank as “Professor” in e-mails and letters for just the reason cited here a couple of times: At worst, it’s flattering. And anyone with a doctorate gets “Dr.,” for the same reason. The only tough part comes when some guy with a Ph.D. insists on being referred to in print as “Dr.,” which is pretty much reserved for M.D.s.

As Jacob alluded to, there is an inverted snobbery at some universities (e.g. Harvard, the University of Chicago) wherein it is considered infra dig to refer to faculty as “Professor”, or as “Doctor” for anyone other than an M.D. Thus non-medical male faculty are always “Mr.

Roughly the same inversion applies to the medical profession in Ireland (and I think the UK): male doctors are addressed as “Dr”, but consultants (higher up the ladder) revert to being addressed as “Mr.” I’ve never had to deal with a female consultant, so I don’t know what the convention is. Probably shifted from Mrs to Ms.

Contra whoever was talking about the difference between sciences and humanities, I notice that in the math department at Berkeley, people use last names to talk about all professors except their own advisor and one or two other affiliated faculty, while in the philosophy department people use first names to talk about all professors, except when disambiguating “John”. I’m not sure how people tend to directly address faculty in the math department (I always avoid terms of address in general), but in the philosophy department it tends to mainly be by first name as well.

And interestingly, my math department snail-mail box gets academic spam occasionally addresses to “Professor Easwaran”. I can’t remember what it’s for, but all the grad students get it.

I used to work as an administrative assistant on an academic journal while I was finishing up undergrad. I got to write a lot of emails to suggested reviewers asking for their assistance.

What a mess. In North America, many academics are “Professor” because they get that title in tenure track roles (and maybe before?). In the Commonwealth, even Associate Professor is a prestigous title awarded many years into your career, and most academics are “Dr” (or rarely “Mr” or “Ms” if appointed without a PhD).

The objection to using the title for people without an medical degree (MB/BS here, an MD is an actual professional doctorate which most doctors don’t hold) is not often heard in Australia. In fact, since you get to be a doctor with a couple of undergraduate degrees here, I’ve heard PhDs suggest that it shouldn’t be used by most physicians, even as surgeons slowly begin to use it too after centuries of “Mr”/(“Mrs”/”Ms”?).

On behalf of hardworking admins asking you humbly to review papers everywhere, I wished that more academics would list their title on their webpage. “Dear Eszter, please do hours of volunteer work for me” just didn’t cut it.

That said, it was interesting what I got in response given that I would state my job (administrative assistant) in the email.

From North America, Britain, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand: I almost always would get a reply addressed to “Mary” (very rarely “Ms _”) and signed with the person’s first name.

From much of the rest of Europe I would get a reply to “Mrs _”, often signed with the person’s first name but sometimes with their full name and title.

From South America, I would very often get “Dr _”, signed with the person’s first name.

I don’t recall what Asian academics sent and I don’t recall an African reviewer.

“Mr” is a surgeon in UK medicine; a consultant physician would still be “Dr”. It’s an inverted historical snobbery thing because doctors are gentlemen but surgeons are jumped-up barbers.

Oh yeah … Stephen Maturin and all that.

will, schwa: While I am sympathetic to much of what will stated, that really is drifting into a different issue though, isn’t it? I mean, what form of address I would *choose* (informal, invariably) is quite different from the forms of address that have been applied to me. And all of this is quite seperate from the question of what form of address a female colleague of mine would receive, all else being equal.

I should perhaps note that when I referred to the `labelling dance’ above, it is not neccessarily a social/hierarchical thing. When crossing the medicine mathematics jargon barrier, it is useful to have a rough idea of the expertise of people in the room….

Is there any kind of justifiable social purpose for elevated terms of address such as “Doctor” and “Professor”?

it’s cheaper than paying them.

For a while I was working on policy issues varying from science to regional development and arts & culture.

I was always addressed by, and addressed people, by first names. But I also got quite a bit of mass mailings (e.g. invitations to conferences, etc). After a while I noticed that the science ones nearly always awarded me the title of “Dr” while the other ones always went with firstname lastname.

No gender implications, as “Tracy” could, and sometimes is, read as a male name. But the difference in assumptions between different professions was interesting.

Eszter, check this out…

http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00005543/01/Web_Impact_Factors,_A_critical_review.pdf

At my first APSA, at a not-very-interesting panel, a man in the audience asked a good question that was not couched in pretentious language. The panelist began by saying “What is your institutional affiliation? I can’t read your badge from here.” The man replied that he was a member but not in academia. The panelist sniffed “I see.” and gave a patronizing non-answer.

So, yeah, snobs, status games, appealing to uninteresting mid-career men at schools they think beneath them, taking it out on anyone they dare, at a conference where threats of reprisal are low? Sounds plausible to me. However, I have always been treated with respect and encouragement when on panels and in the audience.

Emily Post c. 1963 said that in personal correspondance you address an MD, dentist or vet as “Dr.” but a Ph.D. as Mr./Mrs./Miss whereas in professional conexts Ph.Ds are “Dr.” or “Professor.” At the college where I was an undergrad, faculty insisted on “Mr.”, “Mrs.” and “Miss” because it was somehow felt to be English and classy. About half also called us “Mr.” and “Miss” which I’d do with my students if I had the guts.

I get Mrs. occasionally which I don’t mind–generally from students making the transition from high school. This is very much in the spirit that they fail to realize I have an office and think they should meet me for appointments in “my” classroom.

I prefer Dr. because I just cannot stand “Ms.” What a stupid move–it carries ideological baggage and what really bugs me is that it hasn’t knocked out Mrs. and Miss as it was supposed to but has become the replacement for “Miss” which has all but died out. The idea seems to be that Ms. as a feminist title only goes for unmarried women–women who can snag men don’t need to be feminists. Mrs used to be the generic title for grown up women, married or not, like Mrs. Anne Kiligrew and if the early feminists who concocted Ms had had any sense they would have gone with that for all grown up women.

I like Dr. anyway. I worked and suffered for that degree, I’m a full professor, which I worked and suffered for also, and I deserve it. And I want all the prestige I can get.

I haven’t noticed any uses of ‘Mr’ or ‘Ms’ instead of ‘Professor’ at Harvard, so Chicago would seem to be a rare holdout. I’ve also found that practices in addressing/refering to faculty members are somewhat confused among grad students. Most of the time we seem (with a few decorous exceptions) to refer to faculty, behind their backs, by their first names (as part of our general air of arrogant presumption); this is not, however, universal (some faculty seem to inspire first-name references, others last-name references, still others full-name references; this seems not to be an index of the speaker’s closeness to or fondness for the faculty member in question). Sex doesn’t play a role at all, so far as I can tell; seniority does to some degree, but not generally.
Addressing faculty, as opposed to referring to them in conversation with third parties (whether the third parties are grad students or other faculty sometimes does, sometimes doesn’t, make a difference) is a more delicate proposition. At one point I asked (via email) a professor with whom I’ve had fairly friendly dealings whether she preferred being addressed by her first or her last name; she didn’t respond at all (though she did reply to the email), which left me uncertain. So I generally don’t address her, or indeed any of the professors, as anything, if I can possibly help it (most professors seem to sign emails by their initials — unhelpful.)
For my part, I always find it odd to be addressed by my full name, without title: it seems stilted to me, though sensible. When I taught a class, my students initially tended to address me as Professor [lastname]. I discouraged them from doing so some persisted) and asked them to call me by my first name (which I thought especially appropriate since some of them were older than I was), adding that if they felt uncomfortable with that, ‘Mr. [Lastname]’ would be the most appropriate, since I didn’t have a doctorate and wasn’t regular faculty. A few did use ‘Mr.’, which I found weird, but most didn’t (that was in the US; when I taught in England, I was initially addressed as Dr, I think, but addressed by my firstname after stating that I preferred it).
I don’t know enough to comment on the gender issue here — save that my _impression_ is students seem to adapt much more easily to addressing female grad students by first name when asked to, than they do male grad students, though initially they don’t differentiate. This may not be accurate though.

John Holbo’s (Dr Holbo’s? Professor Holbo’s?) solution seems sensible to me.
An addendum to the above: most faculty here refer to students by first name, of course. I had one professor who addressed (grad) students in class as Mr/Ms. Lastname (which we the students felt constrained to do as well). This was a tiny bit awkward at first, particularly as it was a fairly international class, and some of the Polish, Indian and Thai names were hard for some of us (including the Professor) to manage. By the end of the term it was working fine, but there were a few uncomfortable/funny moments early on.

Just a couple more data points, with no great insight (and nothing whatsoever in the gender line, alas):

I used to teach in Hong Kong, with frequent research trips to the Philippines. The former, as a former British colony, bestowed much greater respect on Professors than mere Doctors, so when I felt I needed a little extra clout I used “Professor” as soon as I was entitled to do so. (E.g., phoning up the Estates Office to complain about the plumbing.) In the Philippines, however, there were many academics who had been promoted to the top of their profession without a doctorate, so those who wanted to pay me respect always called me “Doctor” rather than “Professor.” I just had to remember which country I was in …

And one of the best lines I have heard about (though, fortunately, not heard directly) on being introduced to someone as “Doctor So-and-So”: Oh, how nice! Are you a PhD, or the kind of doctor who actually helps people?

In the Netherlands any academic staff would be addressed by anyone in personal contact with either mrs or mr. Regardless whether what kind of prof. you are. Maybe full professors are sometimes addressed as prof, but using dr. in a personal communication is just a do-not overhere.

Just to be safe, I call simply EVERYONE ‘Herr Doktor Professor so-and-so’.

Actually, the correct order, in German at least, would be:

“Herr Professor Doktor So-and-So”

It’s a bit more complicated for female professors. The female word for Professor is Professorin. So you might think it would be “Frau Professorin”, but in fact it’s mostly “Frau Professor”. The same is true of Doktor and Doktorin.

Of course, most German doctors would also indicate the field of their doctorate and whether or not they hold the second doctorate, the Habilitation. (In Germany, until recently at least, you needed two doctoral theses to become a professor).

Dr. phil. is a Doctor of Philosophy, which basically applies to all humanities and social sciences.

Dr. rer. nat. is a Doctor of Natural Science.

Dr. med. is a Doctor of Medicine.

Dr. habil. phil. is a Doctor of Philosophy with a Habilitation.

So the fully written-out title of a German professor in, let’s say, history or philosophy would look like this (the firstname wouldn’t be used on such occassion):

“Herr Professor Dr. habil. phil. Lastname”

I agree it is not fair. It reminds me, though, of a story from my college advisor. She told me that ph’ds tend to use ‘doctor’ in inverse proportion to the quality of the institution that dispensed their degree. hers was from yale, so she used her first name socially and professionally. she also said the only truly appropriate time to address yourself as doctor is when trying to make restaurant reservations. i’d think that would raise expectations.

ab, woe should that person also have an honorary degree. That yields Hr. Prof. Dr. habil. phil. Dr. h.c. Familienname.

Woe also to interacting with cultures in which the family name is written first, as I am sure Hargittai Eszter can appreciate. The Hungarian cases as easy as anything in a Finno-Ugric tongue is, the Bavarian cases rare (Maier Sepp excepted), but what to do with Supachai Panichpakdi? Especially as said person may have had so much contact with the Western approach as to adopt it, but maybe not. Of such things are assistants’ gray hairs made.

(It’s been fairly well covered, but the southern usage of Miss Sally or Mister Louis really is reserved for children. Interestingly, I think that Polish has something similar, where it is often used among colleagues at work. So you are still using the formal forms of the verbs, but people are, say, Pan Michal or Pani Magda.)

I have some recent but related research on the use of titles. My coauthor and I have a theory that is applicable to whether or not academics use a title when referring to themselves (theo.to/modesty). We test this theory using data we collected from voicemail greetings and undergraduate course syllabi in economics departments in California’s state universities. One result of our analysis (which we do not discuss in much detail because it is peripheral to the point of the paper) is that female faculty members were more likely to use a title than male members (fn 28). The rationale for this may be very much related to Eszter’s observations about how female academics are often addressed differently than male academics — because people often choose not to address female academics as Dr or Prof, women may be less inclined to be “modest” about advertising their PhDs. Eszter pointed out (in an email) that this might have an unintended consequence that women who do so may be perceived as being obnoxious.

rea: “But of course, nothing is more high status than a conspicuous rejection of status markers.”

In defense of Eszter, I don’t take this away from her post at all. It is a lament about a public that misuses titles in ignorant or sexist ways. If someone is going to use a title at all, it should be the proper one.

Laura, I’m surprised that Mrs. is a slur. I think you’re probably right that there is a regional component to that. Age may have something to do with it as well. One sort of grows into the Mrs., or it loses its sting.

My experience is that American students and Asian students tend to call me Professor (even though I have not yet completed my PhD even!!) whereas European students call me Mrs (even though I’m not married) and my Irish students call me Fiona, which is what I tell them to call me. I do think there’s a cultural thing: in UK and Ireland for sure we tend not to put much prestige in the US title “Professor” because EVERYone is either associate professor or professor – in other words the system of AP and then P tends to have undermined the prestige of professorship in US institutions.

Anyway, I’m not sure there’s always an element of gender in this – it’s mostly cultural. There’s certainly some element of gender and sexism in certain situations, but not always I don’t think

Here (Oxford) I know at least one Dr who repeatedly had to tell American students not to call him Professor, and one Professor (GAC) who had to tell someone not to call him Dr…

The undergraduate tutorial secretary from my college calls me Dr whenever I book a room for teaching. Generally I’m fine with Ben though.

The whole Mrs/Ms/Miss thing is circumvented rather neatly here in Belgium by calling all women Mrs. The fact that hardly any women change their surnames on marriage makes things even more different from the US/UK/France.

I’m interested by the face-to-face use of the title Mrs. versus Professor for a woman in with her Ph.D. I’m also interested by the fact that many posts alluded to the fact their authors didn’t “look like a professor.” How, exactly, does a professor look? More precisely, can a woman professor wear a smoking jacket and grow a long, white beard? Of course, I’m being playful, but I can’t help but think some of the F2F uses of Mrs. over Professor or Doctor has something to do with gender stereotypes.

As a New Yorker, I have to disagree with the contention that the honorific “Mrs” is considered a “slur” here. Rather I’d say with Bill Hooker that I, and most people I know, would default to “Ms” as a marital-status-neutral term, and find either “Miss” or “Mrs” less appropriate in most instances. (Indeed, even most of the married women I know use their birth names, and so would not be properly called “Mrs” as I understand the title is supposed to be used.)

I will admit, however, that possibly my favorite thing about having a Ph.D. — besides, of course, the groupies — is being able to answer questions like “Miss? Mrs?” with “Doctor.” It’s the only time I ever use the title.

Boy did this one generate a lot of responses. A bit sensitive aren’t we all? When I finished my doctorate, my committee chair, after saying “let me be the first to congratulate you ‘Doctor'”, suggested that I get one of the other small metal trash cans, put it over my head and yell my new title and name 100 times. “Get it out of your system,” he advised. Never call yourself doctor and don’t be upset if don’t. Life will be a lot happier if you don’t develop ‘doctor’s’ disease. You’re not really that big a deal.” It was good advice then and it’s good advice now–“Don’t take yourself too damned serious.”

Especially if your students are emailing you from their sexxypantz4701@hotmail.com addresses late at night to ask about stationery supplies.

“Dear Crooked Timber, I never thought it would happen to me, but late at night while checking the stationary supplies I received an email …”

In re: 106, I think that in American usage “Dear Ms. Smith” is the neutral business salutation. I can see people from a non-native English background stumbling a little as they translate (as German from Frau=Mrs and Fräulein=Miss), but it seems the kind of thing one would learn quickly.

On the other hand, perhaps Germans wonder at my troubles figuring out who gets “Sehr geehrter Herr Schmidt” and who gets “Lieber Herr Schmidt” in professional settings. Hmm.

…my troubles figuring out who gets “Sehr geehrter Herr Schmidt” and who gets “Lieber Herr Schmidt” in professional settings.

Which opens up another problem, especially in emails:

“Hi Professor Lastname” (too informal?)
“Dear Firstname” (too intimate?)

Hi (or variations like Hey, Hiya) seems to be the most widespread among my students.

Very interesting, Eszter.

I couldn’t get through all the comments–why is there so much unwillingness to just say “Wow, I’m sorry to hear that people are such sexist jerks to you.”

Instead the converstaion gets into how to call cashiers and what happens in norway and the south and there’s discussion about these silly side issues.

Sometimes people are just sexist jerks! And that’s interesting and blog-worthy. And I’m sorry to hear about your recent experiences, but thanks very much for bringing them up here.

What is going on here? I can’t believe nobody’s quoted Lucky Jim yet:

“no other professor in Great Britain, he thought, set such store by being called Professor.”