When I was very young, Marion Van Cleef lived next door to us. She was the mother of actor Lee Van Cleef, Jr. (Yes, I met him once.) My folks had taught me that I had a first name, a middle name and a last name. So I reasoned that she did too. Since I wanted to be respectful—and that meant taking the trouble to be correct—I always spoke of her and addressed her as “Mrs. Cleef.” They tried to dissuade me, but I wanted to be correct! P.S. She had been a concert pianist. Wonderfully intelligent lady and very most polite!
May I say I admire you hyphenating the compound adjective before its noun! I corrected many of those this month—even taking out some hyphens after the nouns . .
Charming! (We used to have a cat, Benjamin . .)