Ah Scottie, you have an archer's bull's eye sense when it comes to such things...and as the son of willian tell (the one you don't hear about, the one still walking around with an arrow in his eye!) I can tell you that I am "will" in my teaching life and use "Dr." only to make reservations but even then my wife squirms...she doesn't like it when folks call me Doctor because I'm a Ph.D, not MD, and I tend to think that some of the "Doctor" stuff gets in the way of my teaching method. My mom however, a 3rd grade teacher of 25 years and big supporter of her younger son's education and art always sends me letters addressed to "Dr. Hochman," but as a Jewish mother whose other son is lawyer, what would you expect? It's interesting that you used the word "transaction" since I used Louise Rosenblatt's Transactional Theory of Literature in my dissertation and since we are probably both talking about how people such as doctors and students/patients experience knowledge together. From my personal pov, I tend to be a challenger/nurturer as a teacher and like the friendly first name informality because I can sometimes be perceived as intimidating (please leave this one alone since the real intimidation comes from ignorance and not people). ...you see I know what happens in transactional zones isn't about hierarchy of titles so I tend to make my sense of teaching based on truth and intelligence, not "Dr./Professor" titling. BTW, email is the nail on the Dr. Coffin (Happy Halloween Everyone!) for me since my experience shows that informality and easy access open up more teaching moments to me than formal addressing and classic "office hours." will