That's *Ms.* Smarty-pants to you.

Mar 16, 2011 00:51

On the Donations Page for Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders, the Billing Information section requires that you select a "Title ( Read more... )

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Comments 11

imvfd March 16 2011, 05:13:51 UTC
Perhaps Mr. & Rev. & Dr. & Ms.? Or Mr. & Rev. Dr. & Dr. & Ms.?

The possibilities are endless.

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deguspice March 16 2011, 07:39:36 UTC
They have "Mr. & Mr." and "Ms. & Ms.", but not "Mrs. & Mrs.".

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bedfull_o_books March 16 2011, 13:10:21 UTC
I noticed that too. It bugs me for reasons I am not caffeinated enough to put my finger on.

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miss_chance March 16 2011, 14:14:55 UTC
Someone else will articulate it better, but "Mrs." is used to denote married women, where as "Ms." translates more to "I'd rather not say," or as I learned it growing up "My social status is unrelated to my marital status." So if you're married to a woman and you want the fact that you're married to confer on you the same category of shift in social status that you would have had if you had married a man, then you might want "Mrs. & Mrs." Or maybe your wife feels very differently about titles than you do and you might also need "Ms. & Mrs." Also following the model here, you might also need "Mrs. & Ms." as they have both "Mr. & Dr." and "Dr. & Mr."

I'm also troubled by the lack of any way for an intersex-identified individual, who is not also a Dr., Judge, or relegiously identified person, to make a selection. But I'm not sure how they would go about doing that.

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pne March 16 2011, 14:22:56 UTC
And no "Prof."?

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magid March 16 2011, 16:27:11 UTC
Seems like two drop-down menus would be better, with an ampersand appearing only if the second drop-down menu were used.

Nitpick: I hope they don't have a period at the end of Miss, since that's not an abbreviation.

There aren't any military titles, nor any nobility titles (baron, marchioness, lady, etc.), nor Justice, President, Senator, Representative, and so on.

Perhaps typing in honorifics is the only way to cover all the bases... (and faster than a convoluted drop-down menu, anyway).

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deguspice March 16 2011, 21:12:59 UTC
I was just thinking that would be a good soluntion.

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dpolicar March 16 2011, 17:23:57 UTC
I'm finding myself in the odd position of endorsing a traditional rule about such greetings: there's an implicit ordering, which makes "Mr. and Dr." simply wrong and "Dr. and Mr." correct (completely independent of questions of anyone's sex or gender).

I mention this, not because I think anyone should care, but because it just feels really odd to have an opinion about that.

Mostly my opinion is "This is a job for Captain Freeform!"

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