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ImageSMART TALK

by Dr. Viva Palaver  

MS: Over half of the staff at the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired is women.  Whether we like to be addressed in person or by mail as Miss, Mrs., or Ms depends upon the person.  But don't use Pn., that abbreviation for Person from the hyper-P.C. eighties.  It's redundant, anyway.

As staff psychologist at the institute, I see nothing wrong with a very simple solution:  Use names.  That's what we do here.  We say or write Viva or Dear Viva Palaver, respectively.  If the person being addressed insists upon an honorific, often because of insecurity issues, then we'll use whatever they like, as in Dr. Lawrence Blithermore.  Local speech teacher Sally Poke prefers Miss Poke.  Fine.

We extend our style of address to anonymous business mail, because Dear sirs is usually comically wrong.  We simply address mail to a company with the company name, as in Dear Tektonix.

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