Earlier, the word “miss” was used more frequent than the word “ms”. It was only around 1900s that the word “ms” was started to be commonly used. That word was promoted by women’s equality to men’s movement.
“Miss” refers to a woman that is not married yet. It is a shorten form of Mistress. So, whenever we call a woman with this word the definite assumption is that woman is not married yet. While the word “ms” does not denote to its person’s marital status. It is either unknown or unimportant to be implied.
Which ever we use, we should remember that those words are to show respect.
Dominica Nursanti 