Are You Talkin' to Me?

I regret the disappearance of courtesy titles — Mr., Miss, Ms, Mrs., and the like (regardless of what you think a specific title). I am not everybody's friend, I do not wish to be everybody's friend, and I do not care for those who are not my friends to address me as though they were. (If we're going to dispense with the titles, I'd prefer the use of untitled last names between those who are acquaintances at best, e.g., "Hey, Cheney!" instead of "Hey, Dick!".)

It has just struck me, though, that this switch seems to have been approximately coïncidental with the rise in obsessive use of suffices when identifying companies, corporations, and what-not outside of legal documents: e.g., "Microsoft, Inc." instead of just "Microsoft." And it's not even being done well: one doesn't write, "John Jones worked at Microsoft, Inc. for four years before retiring on the profits from overpriced products" — one writes, "John Jones worked at Microsoft, Inc., for four years...."

It has seemed to me for some time that business entities' cultural respect has been rising, while the cultural respect granted to actual people has been declining. This is just one more example. Now that I mention it, it occurs to me that advertisers engage in a great deal of faux familiarity between strangers; and yet their companies take great care to stick their stupid little legalistically literal suffix after every last mention of their name.

There's a lot more to be said about this, but I haven't sorted it all out yet. Another aspect that has just occurred to me: the distinction between "etiquette" and "formality," and their cultural valuations.