And it was over the way we addressed women. Men, of course, were always Mr. You never even had to ask unless you thought they were Sir or Lord.

But women, we were always addressed by our relationship to men. Miss. Mrs. We'd either missed out or we were married. And that was it. Spinster. Wife. Nothing else.

Men the norm, women the abnormal.

I was reminded of this with news that Sheila Michaels, 78, died in New York over the weekend. She didn't invent the term but she did her very best to popularise it.

The Oxford Dictionary Online reveals it first emerged in 1901 in the Springfield Sunday Republican: "The abbreviation 'Ms.' is simple, it is easy to write, and the person concerned can translate it properly according to circumstances. For oral use it might be rendered as 'Mizz', which would be a close parallel to the practice long universal in many bucolic regions, where a slurred Mis' does duty for Miss and Mrs. alike."

By 1974, the British Passport Office "conceded the right to women to call themselves Ms (pronounced Miz) on their passports instead of Mrs or Miss".

But somewhere between 1901 and 1974, Sheila Michaels radicalised those two letters. A 2007 story in The Guardian says Michaels saw a typo on a newsletter and claimed it for her own. "[I] was looking for a title for a woman who did not 'belong' to a man. There was no place for me. No one wanted to claim me and I didn't want to be owned. I didn't belong to my father and I didn't want to belong to a husband - someone who could tell me what to do. I had not seen very many marriages I'd want to emulate. The whole idea came to me in a couple of hours. Tops."

Eight years after that British decision, when I started in journalism, I was still a miss, according to the rules. I'd been living with my soon-to-be-husband for years and the term miss seemed utterly Austenian. We'd had 12 years of the influence of The Female Eunuch; and Ms. Magazine, which regularised the term, was popular from its inception in 1971. But the institutions resisted. As ever, they resisted.

So I started a petition in the newsroom. Something like, we, the undersigned, request that the Sydney Morning Herald uses the word Ms as an optional honorific for women (seriously, was I ever so meek?).

My goodness, I did the rounds. Older men indulged me. Older women got cranky (and yep, I've since become cranky and with good reason). Younger men and women thought it was a good idea but were terrified that they'd lose their jobs (that feeling never goes away apparently and that's why you always need to join your union). Still, a few weeks in, I got enough signatures to deliver the petition to the editors. Waiting, waiting.

Suddenly, a senior man appeared at my desk with a cartoon. I can't remember much about it, except that it was of Margaret Thatcher, the then British prime minister, in fishnet stockings and not much else. He asked me if I thought the cartoon was sexist. I knew this is a test to which the answer should have been, no, no worries.

Instead I replied: "Would you think it was funny if it was a man in that cartoon?" We were still some distance from Alexander Downer. The editor rubbed his chin and walked off.

About three days later, I received the letter that Ms has been added to the Sydney Morning Herald style guide. Not for me but for all the women we wrote about. Apparently that marked me as a bit of a troublemaker and for my sins, I spent even more time doing menial tasks but that didn't matter. With all those signatories standing together, we were on the way. We were even ahead of the New York Times by a couple of years.

Has it changed anything? Well, funny you should ask. I was having a conversation with a student earlier this year about when to use honorifics. She said and I paraphrase, I thought Ms was only for women who were divorced. In her mind, you were a miss until married and a Ms if you couldn't sustain your marriage. Some of her classmates nodded but most of the others said they used it themselves happily and always would.

And for that I thank Ms Michaels. Women are labelled in so many ways.

Using the ms word was just one way we could shake that off.

Jenna Price is a Fairfax Media columnist and academic at the University of Technology Sydney.

Twitter: @jennaprice

Facebook: facebook.com/jennapricejournalist