"The Economist's style guide," Amanda Hess pointed out in an article titled "Multiple Choice: Who's 'They'?" in The New York Times on April 3, "still calls the honorific Ms. an 'ugly' word."
That reminded me: When the word began to gain currency in the 1970s, my informal teacher of English, Eleanor Wolff, observed it sounded like a Southern mispronunciation of "Miss." Not that she looked down upon the Southern use of the language. For example, she urged me to read Eudora Welty, in particular her novel "Losing Battles" (1970). Having never married, she herself stuck to "Miss."
My teacher's reservations notwithstanding, I did submit my translations of Japanese women poets to Ms. Magazine that Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes had started in 1971. I even remember having been invited to their editorial office. And their magazine took a poem or two of Taeko Tomioka.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.