Professor? Sir? Both?

[major_clanger]

As an editor for SCRIPT-ed, I'm currently approaching potential authors for papers or articles for the journal. One of my candidates is a professor with a knighthood; whilst the letter is clearly addressed to:

Professor Sir Fred Bloggs

what is the appropriate salutation?

Dear Professor Sir Fred Bloggs

is much too longwinded, but should I give his academic title priority

Dear Professor Bloggs

or his honorific title? And if the latter, is it

Dear Sir Fred

which is apparently more strictly correct, but seems a bit personal, or

Dear Sir Fred Bloggs

which seems more formal but less natural?

Oh, the pitfalls of ettiquette. I can suddenly see the point of "Dear Comrade", although I suspect that even that soon fine-tunes itself into degrees of "Dear Comrade Deputy Under-Secretary", with the salt mines awaiting transgressors.

Comments

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

I see these sort of titles as separate things to be used when appropriate. So in your case I think

Dear Professor Bloggs

or

Dear Sir Fred

would be fine. But since you are presumably contacting him as a professor then I would use the former.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I agree: Dear Professor Bloggs would be more professional in this context -- but Professor Sir Fred Bloggs in the address line and on the envelope. I used to work with a Reverend Professor Fred Bloggs. He got academic letters as Professor and church ones as Reverend Bloggs but invariably preferred to be simply 'Fred'.

[timill]

What sort of knighthood is it, or is he a Baronet?

Assuming this is an approach related to academia, I favour Dear Professor Bloggs.

[alex-holden.livejournal.com]

If you're querying about an article for an academic journal my instinct would be to go with the academic title.

[drplokta]

You must clearly solve this problem by becoming personal friends with Professor Sir Fred Bloggs. Then you can just address correspondence to "Dear Fred".

[bellinghwoman.livejournal.com]

As you can imagine, this is something I have had to deal with fairly often :-)

You are correct that the letter should be addressed to Professor Sir Fred Bloggs. The salutation should be Dear Professor Bloggs.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

And here was I, thinking you just wrote 'Oi, Fred!'

(And anyway, what's wrong with just texting him?)

(I suspect this may be covered by Debrett's - we could check when we get home.)

[bellinghwoman.livejournal.com]

We have a copy of Burke's Peerage, rather than Debrett's but it does have a section on correct salutations. I love one of their examples, which posits Lionel Bart being made a baronet, adopting Bart Simpson and then dying so that Bart inherits the title and becomes Sir Bart Bart (bart.)

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

*Chortle!*

Thank you for brightening an otherwise dull day in the office.

*Chortle encore*

[redbird]

It's almost a shame this is going to someone specific, so you can't just write "Dear Sir."