Re: Gender neutral - any new developments in your neck of the-- woods?

[Valerie Priester <hammerl -at- buffalo -dot- edu>]

I also use second person singular whenever possible when writing my 
documents, which are directed toward the reader.
Of course, I also think your mother-in-law was technically correct, in the 
old-fashioned Emily Post school of things about the name deal ( Ms. Post 
said, "And a widow no less than a married woman should always continue to 
use her husband's Christian name, or his name and another initial, engraved 
on her cards. She is Mrs. John Hunter Titherington Smith, or, to 
compromise, Mrs. J. H. Titherington Smith, but she is never Mrs. Sarah 
Smith; at least not anywhere in good society. In business and in legal 
matters a woman is necessarily addressed by her own Christian name, because 
she uses it in her signature. But no one should ever address an envelope, 
except from a bank or a lawyer's office, Mrs. Sarah Smith."), but then 
again Emily Post has been dead for over forty years, and no one I know
leaves calling cards anymore, so I think this bit of advice, too, has gone 
the way of the horse and buggy. And no one was a Ms. back then.

I've never had occasion to address my audience or my personas by their
titles, so it hasn't come up in the workplace. ;-)

Oh, and Emily would have said it was just grand for Megan's friend to 
continue to be Mrs. Smith ("A woman who has divorced her husband retains 
the legal as well as the social right to use her husband's full name, in 
New York State at least. Usually she prefers, if her name was Alice Green, 
to call herself Mrs. Green Smith; not Mrs. Alice Smith, and on no
account Mrs. Alice Green unless she wishes to give the impression that she 
was the guilty one in the divorce."). So not only could she still be Mrs. 
Smith, she could still be Mrs. David Smith if she so chose. Hmmm. That 
could get ugly, and confusing.

http://www.bartleby.com/95/10.html

--On Monday, March 03, 2003 3:33 PM -0500 Kirsten Zerbinis=20
<salmonzerbinis -at- rogers -dot- com> wrote: