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Dick Margulis wrote:
>
> The earlier post ... that suggested Dear Susan Smith gets
> my vote.
Mine too. I find the usage awkward, but anything else I can
think of is worse.
> It ... avoids the awkwardness that arises when we
> do not know the sex of the recipient ...
Which is fairly often, even with names which are fairly
common in English. People guess wrong for "Sandy" quite
often (In my case it is short for "Alexander".) and there
is no way to know for "Chris", "Pat", ...
Also, "Ms. Smith" is wrong if it should be "Dr. Smith"
or "Admiral Smith" or ...
