Glamour! Sophistication! Punctuation! Isn’t this what you think of when you hear the phrase Ladies’ Day?

Ladies’ Day is a common aspect of horse-racing festivals, and today is Ladies’ Day at the Galway Horse-Racing Festival. As seems to be the tradition, it’s a warm day of greasy rain and even greasier teenage boys in oversized suits drinking during the day.

I’m not a fan, suffice it to say, but each to their own. Anyway, one of the most interesting things about Ladies’ Day is Ladies’ Day: that is, the phrase itself, and how almost everyone has to stop and think for a second about how to spell it.

That’s all down to the apostrophe of course. Is it Ladys, or Lady’s, or Ladies, or Ladies’? Well obviously it’s Ladies’, because that’s what I’ve been using from the start, but why is it Ladies’?  Continue reading →