Monday, February 25, 2019

Titles and Honorifics: Doctor My Eyes




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A number of my co-workers include their honorifics as part of their email signatures (PhD, MA English ...). De rigueur.

I once considered including mine: BA English  ... and then it seemed ... I don't know... fake ... un-called for. And then I earned a CNA "degree". (That's Certified Network Administrator) after 2 years of rather grueling courses and tests  - and it was no joke back then. Today ... Novell is on the junk pile of IT history (but the background knowledge I learned is not.). I thought to include it in my email signature, but opted against. (TWE) To What End?

In and between all this time, the world went from monikers such as "Master so-and-so", which was relegated to the dust-pile of history, and then we more or less trashed the use of "Miss so-and-so" in place of Ms... But it is location specific still. In Turkey, we still adhere to relatively formal appelations (with multiple honorifics, like the Germans (see below)

Honorific titles are in a state of transition. How about the business letter that used to start: "Dear Sir..."? How do you reformat that for this day and age? Is "Sir" an honorific of another past generation?

In Europe, some of the honorifics extend to several, back-to-back, such that we get both Prof.and  Dr. so-and-so: Prof. Dr. Jones.

Doctor. One of the most venerated honorifics you can achieve. So....Doctor My Eyes it is.



Lest it be forgotten:



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