Use of Courtesy Titles and Honorifics in Professional Writing

Use Of Courtesy Titles And Honorifics In Professional Writing

The use of honorifics (Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms.) and styles (HRH, His Holiness, etc.) differs greatly among publications in both journalism and academia. The differences are based on tradition, practical concerns (such as space), and cultural norms. There is a continuum among publications between using no honorifics at all, using some honorifics but not styles, and using all honorifics, including styles. In certain cases honorifics and styles may be used according to some other pattern, or selectively only for certain persons. Note that this discussion deals only with the use in the English language; others, for example German, are very different.

Read more about Use Of Courtesy Titles And Honorifics In Professional Writing:  Titles, Honorifics, and Styles, Comparison of Publications, Styles Used Sometimes, Styles Not Used

Famous quotes containing the words professional writing, courtesy, titles, professional and/or writing:

    “Three words that still have meaning, that I think we can apply to all professional writing, are discovery, originality, invention. The professional writer discovers some aspect of the world and invents out of the speech of his time some particularly apt and original way of putting it down on paper.”
    —John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    “When courtesy fails, be nasty, brutish, and short.”
    —Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

    “I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.”
    —Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)

    “Many young girls are ... becoming trained nurses, whose gentle ministrations in the sick-room, skilled touch, patient watchfulness and unwearied vigils, are as great factors in the care of the sick, as are the professional physicians.”
    —Lydia Hoyt Farmer (1842–1903)

    “Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all its beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that of walking, is added.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)