Table Plan - Miss, Mrs or Ms.....

I didn't use any titles at all. Just seems like an extra job to me!

I agree Kharv....It seems like its a bit of a kerfuffle!!! Didn't want to offend any divorced people etc!!!

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I'd avoid titles, as there are no hard and fast rules for Ms.

Titles can be self-defining -I cal myself Ms and I am neither married, nor widowed nor divorced.

A divorced woman might call herself Ms, but might still go by Mrs__ or even Miss__.

A widow would likely still go by Mrs__ but not necessarily.

I would say unless you are sure of their titles, then just use their names. Saves causing offence or getting it wrong!

(I'm new here - I'll introduce myself properly, but wanted to chime in on this one)

I have to agree with the majority of people here. Use given and surnames and leave out the titles - you'll avoid a minefield?

The ultra traditional way is that married women take the full name of their spouse if you use the title Mrs. So, if Janet Smith and John Smith are married, he is Mr John Smith and she is Mrs John Smith. Some people don't like this (understandably).

The only exception I might make to not using titles is for children - they quite like the formality of being "Master William Smith" or "Miss Lucy Smith" and you don't have the Unmarried/Married/Divorced/Widowed problem with children.

I use Ms as I am divorced, my aunt who is widowed uses Mrs.

If your worried about offending people then as others have said don't bother with titles.

I would just use first names, more personal and saves time ;-)

It sounds like the common consensus is to avoid the use of titles, but if you do use titles the rule of thumb as to whether they have a full stop or not after them is that abbreviations should only have a full stop when the last letter of the abbreviation is not the last letter of the full length word. So full stops after 'The Hon.' and 'Rev.' but not after Mr or Miss or Mrs or Dr (unless it is the last word of the sentence. I'm not sure of what word Ms is an abbreviation!

I used a mixture of first name/surname (Jane Doe - not real), familial titles (Aunty Jane - not real) and nicknames (Snoop Hogg - real). I didn't use any titles. I only included surnames in the first category to avoid confusion between several Helens, and once I'd included their surnames, I had to include everyone else's (my stationery text was all stretched to be the same length lines).

I checked with the married females which surname they used (unless I had previous evidence that they were using their husband's name).

Thanks Guys!

I will stick to Andrew Smith and avoid the divorced widowed dilemma!!!

Thanks again :-)

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