ladies black evening dress

Hollywood Life: Step Out With Elegance and Class in the Best Black Evening Dress Step Out With Elegance and Class in the Best Black Evening Dress The plural possessive is "ladies'." "Lady" is singular, so if you were referring solely to one woman's shoes, it would be "the lady's shoes." As for your second question, I'm assuming you're referring to a group of women in your salutation of them, so it would be "Good morning, ladies." And as you're addressing them directly, the comma preceding "ladies" is necessary. Dear ladies and gentlemen, having made sure to include the names of all the recipients in the postal address block pertaining to the addressees (if you are sending everyone a paper copy of the letter), so that all of them are able to see who else is covered by your salutation. I don't know why you might think Ladies and gentlemen as a form of address started in America.

Understanding the Context

The capitalisation of this NGram chart means it will mostly pick up contexts where it's used to address the group collectively, and if anything it seems to have started to gain traction in BrE, not AmE. But in any case, I'm sure it was always used for all mixed-sex audiences, not just the nobility. Every item on this page was chosen by a Town & Country editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.