Some follow-up reading about Gloria Steinem tumbled me down a linguistic rabbit hole. It led me first to a 2022 New York Times Opinion Round Table by Jessica Bennett, “Gloria Steinem on Ms. Magazine and Feminism Today,” for which “The Times convened a handful of early Ms. editors and writers to reflect on the magazine’s founding and where the feminist movement is today.” It included this passage on the reluctance of the Times to use “Ms.” as an honorific:

Gloria Steinem, Ms. co-founder: It took something like 15 years for The New York Times to use it. I was “Miss Steinem of Ms. magazine.” When The New York Times finally changed, a whole bunch of us went to see Abe Rosenthal [a former executive editor of The Times] and gave him flowers. And he said the most infuriating thing, which was that if he’d known it mattered so much to us, he would’ve done it sooner. We just wanted to punch him. I mean, we had previously picketed him, because many other publications and newspapers were already using “Ms.” as the equivalent of “Mr.”

That first link, in turn, led me to a 1991 Times “Looking Back” column by David W. Dunlap, “1986 | ‘Ms.’ Joins The Times’s Vocabulary,” which shares the history behind that reluctance and eventual adoption, noting:

Before June 20, 1986, one could not be a Ms. in the pages of The Times.

I’ve been a Times reader since the early ’80s. So accustomed am I to seeing “Ms.” in The Times that I presumed it had always been in use. That turns out to be true, from a certain point of view.

Dunlap’s column included an image of the Editor’s Note, buried on page 33, section B-1, announcing the Times’ adoption of “Ms.,” which read:

Beginning today, The New York Times will use “Ms.” as an honorific in its news and editorial columns.

Until now, “Ms.” had not been used because of the belief that it had not passed sufficiently into the language to be accepted as common usage. The Times now believes that “Ms.” has become a part of the language and is changing its policy.

The Times will continue to use “Miss” or “Mrs.” when it knows the marital status of a woman in the news, unless she prefers “Ms.”

“Ms.” will also be used when a woman’s marital status is not known, or when a married woman wishes to use it with her prior name in professional or private life.

That policy was later updated to default to “Ms.” unless the person in question preferred a different honorific.

Dunlap’s column also included this dry aside on the release of Gloria Steinem’s Ms. magazine in 1971:

(“Ms.,” The Times explained to readers, was “the form of address preferred by feminists.”)

I chuckled.