Too much information?

[tim]

Poll #2586

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 21

View Respondents

Suppose you are a researcher and you collaborate with your husband, wife, domestic partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, lover, mistress, gigolo, inamorat{o|a}, sweetie, fuckbuddy, or baby mama. Suppose you are giving an academic talk. Which of the following do you consider reasonable ways to refer to your joint work with your collaborator (named, say, Dana Q. Zygomorphism), when used more than once in the same talk?

View Answers

"In work with my wife..."
3 (14.3%)

"In work with my husband..."
3 (14.3%)

"In work with Dr. Zygomorphism..."
16 (76.2%)

"In work with {Mr.|Ms.} Zygomorphism..."
6 (28.6%)

"In work with Zygomorphism..."
11 (52.4%)

"In work with Dana..."
18 (85.7%)

"In work with my collaborator..." [when credit is given by name in a slide]
17 (81.0%)

Something else
2 (9.5%)

None of the above.
0 (0.0%)

Which of the following phrases would you consider unprofessional to use one or more times during an academic talk (assuming it was true)?

View Answers

"In work with my wife..." [speaker is male]
13 (68.4%)

"In work with my husband..." [speaker is female]
13 (68.4%)

"In work with my wife..." [speaker is female]
13 (68.4%)

"In work with my husband..." [speaker is male]
13 (68.4%)

"In work with my partner..."
10 (52.6%)

"In work with my significant other..."
14 (73.7%)

"In work with my boyfriend..."
18 (94.7%)

"In work with my girlfriend..."
18 (94.7%)

"In work with my girlfriend's other boyfriend..."
18 (94.7%)

"In work with my friend with benefits..."
18 (94.7%)

"In work with my gay lover..."
17 (89.5%)

"In work with the mother of my children..."
18 (94.7%)

"In work with the person with whom I have sexual intercourse on a regular basis..."
18 (94.7%)

"In work with my partner in a full-time BDSM relationship..."
17 (89.5%)

"In work with your mom..."
13 (68.4%)

None of the above
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[naath]

I think that Dr/Prof Bar, Dr/Prof Foo Bar, Dr/Prof F. Bar, F. Bar, Bar, and, Foo would all be ways I'd expect to hear used to refer to an academic. The other options whilst all valid in casual conversation seem to me to be irrelevant and potentially confusing (which of the collaborators is your wife?).

Mr/Mrs Bar is entirely unacceptable of they are a Dr or a Prof, but acceptable if they do not.

[etb]

"Dr." isn't as jarring as "Prof." (Tim may remember the wave of tittering after some student said "Professor Harper" during the ML Workshop panel), but it strikes me as superfluous—and a strange inversion of formality, since a talk is (at most) as formal as a paper, and no one uses titles in papers.

(Mrs. and Miss should be entirely unacceptable, period.)