policy statement, but nobody I knew used "Dr" (except those in the medical department) With the sole exception of the president's office, secretaries were instructed not to say "Dr so-and-so's office" when they picked up an unanswered phone call. (When that happened you could be sure that the party you were calling was genuinely unavailable. Part of the AT&T ethos--now abandoned--was that everybody, right up to the president, answered their own phones.) Doug