59: France Bans Mademoiselle

France, never shy about controversy, has banned the use of Miss, or Mademoiselle, on government forms.

But why? And while we’re at it, what’s the deal with Ms?

Linguist Daniel Midgley discusses terms of address on this episide of Talk the Talk.

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But it took until the 1970s for it to hit print in a big way. This chart from Google N-Grams compares “Ms Smith” and “Ms Jones”, two common surnames.