{"id":36922,"date":"2017-07-10T21:09:57","date_gmt":"2017-07-11T01:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=36922"},"modified":"2017-07-12T17:24:56","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T21:24:56","slug":"rip-ms-sheila-michaels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/rip-ms-sheila-michaels\/","title":{"rendered":"RIP, Ms. Sheila Michaels"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sheila Michaels — the woman responsible for popularizing the honoric “Ms.” as a substitute for “Mrs.” or Miss” — died last month of leukemia at age 78.<\/p>\n

As her New York Times obituary by Margalit Fox notes<\/a>, Michaels didn’t invent “Ms.,” nor did she claim to. The abbreviation appeared in a Massachusetts newspaper in 1901, and was later used by stenographers and Marxists. The latter provided inspiration to Michaels: Her roommate in the early 1960s received a Marxist publication addressed to “Ms. Mari Hamilton.”<\/p>\n

Michaels liked the idea of an honorific for women that did not reflect marital status. She mentioned it during a radio appearance around 1969. The Times obituary says:<\/p>\n

“Not long afterward, when Gloria Steinem was casting about for a name for the progressive women\u2019s magazine she was helping to found, she was alerted to Ms. Michaels’s broadcast.<\/p>\n

The magazine, titled Ms., made its debut in late 1971 as an insert in New York magazine; the first stand-alone issue appeared the next year.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n