Use Alone As A Form of Address
"Miss" is the proper form for addressing all young ladies. It is sometimes used for younger adult woman, for example, "May I help you, Miss?" In the United States, "Ma'am" is more common for all adult women regardless of marital status, as it may be taken as patronizing, and it is presumptive to assume marital status based solely on apparent age. "Miss" alone is often used by schoolchildren to address female teachers regardless of marital status.
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Famous quotes containing the words use alone, form and/or address:
“... it is use, and use alone, which leads one of us, tolerably trained to recognize any criterion of grace or any sense of the fitness of things, to tolerate ... the styles of dress to which we are more or less conforming every day of our lives. Fifty years hence they will seem to us as uncultivated as the nose-rings of the Hottentot seem today.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“Ambivalence reaches the level of schizophrenia in our treatment of violence among the young. Parents do not encourage violence, but neither do they take up arms against the industries which encourage it. Parents hide their eyes from the books and comics, slasher films, videos and lyrics which form the texture of an adolescent culture. While all successful societies have inhibited instinct, ours encourages it. Or at least we profess ourselves powerless to interfere with it.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“There’s nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.”
—Carson McCullers (1917–1967)