Some drift started on another thread, Horny Xmas, because the OP used the term 'manageress', which some US posters found amusing — one asking whether we over here would refer to a female pilot as a 'pilotess'. I responded that, be that as it may, I found the present PC insistence of one of our more 'liberal' papers, The Guardian, on calling all performers in plays 'actors' lost a recognised conventional and valuable distinction, & thus impoverished rather than enriched the language — 'actress' being a usefully distinctive term, surely recognised as such in US as much as in UK.

So when should the '-ess' suffix be used? when useful, & when inappropriate for reasons of PC or otherwise? & what are the Transatlantic variables, as e.g. in 'manageress', a term always used over here but not, it would appear, over on your side?