In the course of a very silly MetaFilter argument about whether it hurts the Guardian‘s feelings to be called the Grauniad (talk about your political correctness run amuck!), daisyk linked to the excellent Guardian style guide Twitter account, and I thought I’d share it here. Right off the bat I learned that the “La’s” of The La’s, a band I never heard of, is “an abbreviation of Lads, so the apostrophe signifies missing D, not a plural” and it’s pronounced Lazz (not, as apparently many people think, Lahz). Hooray for style guides!
Is there a section of the guide that explains when to use an apostrophe to signify a plural?
There is also its excellent evil twin, the Grauniad Style Guide twitter account, which I am not entirely sure is not written by the same person.
For a second I read it as the Guardian tweet style guide, which would be very exciting.
Thanks for the tip about the La’s! I had always wondered about that apostrophe. You may not have heard of them, but you may well have heard their major hit, There She Goes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX9TDQcCyVE). A quintessential pop song.
So quintessential I can’t actually be sure whether I’ve heard it before, but I certainly enjoyed it, so thanks! (By 1988 I had pretty much stopped listening to new pop/rock, but I suppose I could have heard it playing in a record store or something.)
The La’s don’t have an apostrophe on their bass drum.
The Grauniad style guide is very funny–thanks James E!
@D-AW: It’s continuing an earlier thread with examples like “the Oakland A’s”, “Booker T & the MG’s”, and “the B-52’s”, in each of which the apostrophe is because of the plural. (Of course, the apostrophe doesn’t really “signify” a plural in those cases in the same way that it “signifies” a missing D in “The La’s”; but at some point you have to trust your readers, and on Twitter, this “some point” is reached very quickly.)
@Ran Thanks for the backstory – it’s made stranger by the fact that the La’s /is/ plural.
‘There She Goes’ was a radio and club favourite in my student days. The La’s recorded just one album, which they said they hated, even advising fans not to buy it. But it’s a pop-rock classic round these parts, and the closing track ‘Looking Glass’ is especially bittersweet and beautiful, if you’re into this sort of music.