A long tale of verification
Published by Deanna Hoak April 26th, 2006 in copyeditingOkay. I’m going to describe a particular fact-checking problem to you all. Some of you may be shocked that I don’t know all this information right off the top of my head, but, well, I don’t. (Not that I don’t know a lot of information off the top of my head–I do. That’s partly due to having attended six different colleges for my undergrad–I’ve mentioned I’ve moved a lot–and hence having graduated with damn near forty hours that I didn’t need, all in core-curriculum requirements at some damn school or another. [Good stuff, too--I’m one of the only English majors I know who came out with As in trig and precalc.])
So, anyway, I occasionally–okay, often–have to verify something. Now I’m actually accustomed to calculating the length of days and years on various fictional planets, and I’m pretty damn good with gravity and how multiple moons affect tide cycles and whatnot, because, yanno, it’s what I do.
However, I’ve been working on a chick-lit book with a protagonist who’s a flight attendant, and I have had absolute hell figuring out for sure the proper spelling of something that’s just…ridiculously common. I’m going to describe the process, but y’all are going to laugh at me. *sigh* Even if you laugh, though, if you don’t sympathize, I can pretty much promise you that you aren’t cut out to be a copyeditor.
So here’s what it is, just so you can get the giggles over with: La Guardia Airport. (And I’m using that spelling because that’s what I’ve chosen–if you want to correct me then by all means PLEASE point me to a definite answer.)
This should be extraordinarily straightforward. The airport is named after good ole Fiorello, and his last name, according to Web11 (Merriam Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition–the standard in the industry) has a space between the “La†and the “Guardia.†That should be it.
But…it’s nagging at me. I’m certain I’ve quite frequently seen the airport listed as “LaGuardia,†and I want to verify because place names aren’t always as they should be.
That’s where the trouble starts. First, of course, I Google. With quotes, I get 935,000 hits for “La Guardia Airport‖and Google tries to correct me by asking if I mean “LaGuardia Airport.†Hmm.
With quotes, I get 1,010,00 hits for “LaGuardia Airport.” These seem to be much better-quality hits, too–like the official Port Authority of New York site. But it still ought to be like Fiorello, right?
Wiki has “LaGuardia,†but while Wiki’s okay for factual stuff (I try hard not to cite them as a primary source when making a correction), they suck for spelling or capitalization or hyphenation. To prove it, they also have “Fiorello LaGuardia†on that same page (with no space). Damn.
At this point, I do what I’ve done on many previous occasions–such as checking the names of bars in obscure hotels of cities I’ve never been to. I pick up the phone. I dial the airport in question and begin apologizing to the person who answers: “I’m a copyeditor working on a novel, and I know this is an odd question, but I’m wondering if you could tell me…â€
The woman who answers has heavily accented (though very good) English, and she assures me that the proper spelling is “LaGuardia‖without the space. “But,†I say, “Fiorello has the space, so it seems odd.â€
“Well,†she says, “I know it may be odd, but that’s how it is. I’ll double-check, though.†She riffles through some papers and comes back with, “Well, it looks as though we have it both ways on our paperwork.â€
“Oh.†I sigh. “Is one more prevalent than the other?â€
“Well…” She riffles some more. “I think it should be two words.” (Yes, this is a contradiction to what she told me earlier.) “We have it both ways, but I think it should be two words.â€
Shit. I thank her politely and hang up.
Now, I’ve mentioned that this is a book with a flight attendant as a protag, right? And therefore flight attendants might be more likely to buy the book, and I just think it’s thus even more important than with some other book to have this right. (Yeah, I’m anal. Again, it’s what I do.) But at this point I’m thinking, How much does this publisher really want to pay me to verify this? Damn.
What I need, I think, is a native New Yorker who might’ve actually seen the signs.
And then I notice that the production editor is on AIM. Well, she’s in NYC. So, even though I hate to bug her, I do so because of these dollar signs flashing in front of my eyes. I query her apologetically, though, and she’s not actually there. Dammit.
Then I get the bright idea to go to Google image search. Maybe I can find a picture of the sign at the airport!â€
So I search, and not twenty seconds after I find this sign (which, yay! gives me an answer), the production editor comes back with a quick note that although she hasn’t verified it yet, she’s almost positive it’s “LaGuardia.” “It ought to be like Fiorello,” she says, “but it’s not.”
“It’s not?” I ask, now bewildered again. “But I just found this sign!”
“That’s a pretty crappy sign,” she answers. And she’s right, of course–I don’t even know it’s official, or if I could trust it to be spelled right if it was. It’s not like the actual airport sign at the front of the airport–if such a thing even exists. She then adds, “I asked my coworker, and she thinks it’s ‘LaGuardia too.’” Two New York editors think it’s “LaGuardia.”
Well, the cusswords my mind is forming (at the problem, not at her) are getting increasingly stronger, and since you guys know me somewhat, you’ll know I was at the “Fuck!” stage by now–and starting to string.
“I just want to verify it for certain,” I say (or something like that–I don’t have the log, so all this dialogue is approximate–hoping like hell while I’m saying it that I’m not being incredibly annoying, because it’s not like production editors have time to deal with this shit; they don’t).
But she’s an editorial type, too, of course, and her interest is piqued. She comes back and notes that even the NYT has it both ways!
Damn. I hadn’t even thought of looking there!! How stupid could I get! I do a quick search through, and she’s right–but “La Guardia” is favored by a very large margin.
Now at this point, I decide on “La Guardia” (which is also, btw, what the author [mostly] has). However, I bother her with one last favor: “You don’t commute by there, do you? Do you think you could take a look at the signs if you do? I’m sorry to have bugged you with something that’ll drive you nuts, but it’s going to drive me nuts if I don’t figure it out, too!”
She answers that she does occasionally go by there, but it might not be for several days. I mark “La Guardia” on the style sheet and continue on.
So I got another IM from her, several days later: “I drove by the airport on Friday. You’re not going to believe it. The green signs all point to LaGuardia, but the brown Port Authority sign welcomes you to La Guardia!”
And may I take this opportunity to point out once again that the Port Authority website favors “LaGuardia”?
“I am so blogging this, ” I tell her.
Honestly. This is what it’s like, being a copyeditor!
(And what I suspect is going on, frankly, if anyone cares by this point, has to do with my post on compounding–I’m willing to bet that most native New Yorkers pronounce and think of the term as one word even though it properly isn’t.)
There. Now you know the process by which I drive myself crazy. Aren’t you glad you were curious? ;-P
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I'm a freelance copyeditor specializing in fantasy and science fiction. SF/F novels I have copyedited have been finalists for (and have sometimes won) the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Golden Spur, John W. Campbell Memorial, Quill, Locus, Philip K. Dick, British Science Fiction, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. In 2007 I was short-listed for a World Fantasy Award for my copyediting.
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May I just say: wow.
You must be incredibly dedicated. :-)
I am laughing, granted, but not at you…
Very…funny story.
And goes to show that I’m probably not anal retentive enough to be a copy editor (though I do sympathize…I just probably wouldn’t have thought to check if it looked right..and either way would have to me).
I can so appreciate this. These are the kinds of things that plague my life on a regular basis.
Hmm, so you did work in linguistics, did you? Yeah, there’s a certain amount of self-selection at work here (and being anal-retentive goes with that too).
Clearly I’m going to have to teach you some Klingon.
Um…what else is there to laugh at?
I am curious how the author had it.
The airport.
Granted I haven’t been to very many, but this is the first one I’ve heard about that wasn’t 100% certain about its own name.
Things like this are often tough to tie down. It frequently surprises me to find that there is no “official” version of something–or more often, there are several “official” versions, depending on what authority one consults. I’ve chased these around many times in my 25+ years of copyediting.
That’s wild. I just had to check for myself, and the MTA subway maps have it as “LaGuardia” too. A friend of mine used to live near the airport, and I’m pretty sure all the signs in her area had it that way too.
I don’t think I can learn to pronounce it differently, though…
Times like these, when I’ve tried to find/remember a detail for a story, the standard discussion in the house is: “So, it’s personal, now?” “YEAH.” Because even the most trivial piece of information will not defeat us! *shakes fist madly*
I can totally relate. I don’t just have to do this at work (”does the battery slide out when you start to unscrew or do you have to pry it out? who’s got a keyboard with battery? we need someone to let us into the lab, no, we can’t just assume the battery slides out on its own!”) but I’ve done it for my own stuff and hell, I write fantasy. Every now and then — as I rip apart my entire library and a good chunk of the internet trying to find out if the fourteen-hundred block of S Street in Washington DC dates from the 1890s or the 1930s or whatever — someone will say, “it’s fantasy, you’re supposed to make this up.”
Except that it’s set in a real city, and what, you don’t think people won’t read this and say to themselves (and their friends), “man, that author don’t know jack, putting a bunch of late victorian rowhouses in the middle of a block that wasn’t built until the twenties, sheesh.” Bad enough I’ve got friends from DC waiting anxiously to see if I can incorporate the city’s license plate slogan into the story (probably not going to happen); you think they wouldn’t fact-check me on the rest?
(I mean, hell, I ended up being very displeased by a recently published book for its glaring reality issues. I can hardly do that and be lazy at the same time, myself. Well, I think so. I’m probably missing eighty other errors in my own at the same time, however, guh.)
Which is to say that hopefully when I get that six-book contract and hold the publisher’s dog hostage until they agree to hire you to do the copyediting, that for any questions I’ll have research proof ready-at-hand. No, really, the Metro station at Judicial Square really is under the Department of Justice!
*offers chocolate*
Too bad I didn’t link you to my post on Decoration Day vs. Memorial day in time to save you any trouble - but hey, at least we were on the same wavelength, right?
:)
I hadn’t realized being a reference librarian had so much in common with being a copy-editor before. :-) We get these kinds of questions, and we go to great lengths to find the answers.
In other words, I feel your pain. :-)
(Also, believe it or not, the NYT had it as both “LaGuardia” and “La Guardia” DURING THE MAN’S LIFETIME. Sheesh!)
I’d just tell them that LGA was fogged in and to use Newark instead :P
Gotta love the internet!
And sometimes it’s a local thing, too. Most of the folks in the DC area still call it “National Airport” and you can find a lot of signs that still say that, too, but it’s supposed to be “Reagon Airport” or maybe it’s “Reagon National Airport” or maybe “Ronald Reagan International Airport” or maybe some other variation.
It does help you identify who’s a local, though, or who’s been flying in and out of it for years.
This is so classic! The more you know, the less you know.
(Tip: One day I got so frustrated with NYC stuff that I bought the NYTimes Style Guide, specifically for geography. It’s not perfect, but it’s nothin’.)
Ah! The airport! Yeah, damned geographical location…;-)
The author has “La Guardia.”
Amusing. Everytime I’ve seen it, it has been two words, and that is how I think of it. oh well.
I’m a New Yorker who flies a lot, though not quite as much as a flight attendant. I say and spell it “LGA”. *) I wouldn’t be surprised to hear a flight attendant say “Newark, Kennedy, and LaGuardia”–hm, interesting, I automatically spell it without the space–but I also wouldn’t be surprised to hear one say “We get a couple of days in New York and then head out from LGA Thursday morning”, at least when talking with a fellow crew member. (”JFK” and “EWR” don’t roll quite so trippingly off the tongue; they are universally “Kennedy” and “Newark” in speech.)
Regardless of how you end up spelling it, my sympathies. *) Lately I’ve been getting all het up about writers who try to make people speak symbols and numerals–he didn’t say “$10,000″, he said “ten thousand dollars” or “ten thousand” or “ten K”; she didn’t say “9:00″, she said “nine o’clock” or “nine”–and I know just how these little things can really get under your skin.
I just did a search of the electronic file, which the production editor so wonderfully supplied me (I think they’re goddesses when they do that), and the author has it “LaGuardia” once on a page I haven’t gotten to yet. :-)
I have managed to leverage my experience many years ago as a NYC taxi driver into being somewhat of a NYC geography maven. At its most extreme this has involved dozens of pages of [popular urban weekly]’s restaurant guides, including the indexes. It’s paid off–a lot of the imformation is taken down over the phone by interns who are often very sharp, but don’t have the knowledge I do. I can look at a description and say, “That can’t be right; those two streets don’t intersect,” or “Highland Boulevard on Staten Island? They must mean Hylan Boulevard.”
Books that take place in NYC are one of my specialties, so I can tell you that “La Guardia” is correct for both the mayor and the airport. It’s named after him. [Popular urban weekly] and [popular national weekly]’s style sheets have this. The airport is named after the man; therefore it, too, is spelled as two words.
However, when I was driving a cab years ago, I thought it was one word.
//Marlon-Brando-as-the-Godfather voice//: “If you had come to me…”
I used to do this sort of thing all the time before the Internet. More than once I’ve walked into a bar and asked the bartender to see one of the whiskey bottle so I could verify, say, that it’s “Bushmills” and not “Bushmill’s.” Or browsed through the bins at Tower Records to verify dozens of band and album names. I still do what I need to.
Do you have the NY Public Library public information line. I don’t have it handy, but it’s great for things like this.
Yowza. That’s stressful, for sure.
I do sympathize as I’m a copy editor for a market/research firm. We had a problem the other day about a cosmetic company in Russia and its four different spellings.
So even though the editor saw two different signs, are you sticking with La Guardia?
Robert, you’re glorious. Absolutely, utterly fucking glorious. :-) I don’t have even the eensiest, tiniest doubt that you know exactly what you’re talking about, and I am incredibly relieved to hear that I was choosing the right one. :-)
I’m laughing and amazed that even the street signs don’t agree!
Wow! And this absolutely fascinates me :)
Heh. Yes, my master’s was in linguistics–specializing is sociolinguistics, because I’m fascinated by the way the sexes and classes and regions use language to distinguish themselves
I’m so game to learn some Klingon. It’s only right that I should at least be able to berate someone for asking whether or not I speak it. ;-)
Well, with Russian, you’re dealing with transliteration, so it’s never so certain–that always makes it tough. :-)
Oh, I knew this. I’ve called many a reference librarian. :-) I think the world of y’all. :-)
;-)
*breaks the chocolate and shares*
We’ll have fun. :-)
None of us here know the proper name of the organization we work for. The corporate entity’s name, sure, but us? The subsegment of the business covered by our policies, manuals, and plans?
“Wait, aren’t we a group now? Shouldn’t that be XYZG?”
“Noooo… I thought we were a division again. XYZD.”
“No, the division is everyone that reports to Trevor. That would include the Tennessee plant, too.”
“Would it?”
“I think so. Maybe the intranet says… Crap. The org-chart still has Noel at the top.”
“Look, I’m just going to put down XYZ, without the Group or Division or anything.”
“… But isn’t that everyone that reports to Ken?”
And forget about what the town knows us as. We’ve had three major name changes in the last fifty years (discounting all the Groups, Divisions, and Incorporateds that have come and gone). The industrial park still bears the original name of the company, too, so even high-schoolers are sometimes more familiar with the fifty-years-ago name. If I’m dealing with someone who doesn’t work here, I have to throw out two or three names before I hit on the one they can identify as us…
Which I should’ve remembered since I used to live near D.C. I personally called it “Reagan National” out of a sense of accuracy, but most folks I knew in the area still just called it “National”.
Excellent. :-)
(BTW, the toll-free number here is 1-866-NGL-INFO in case you’d like to call me for help).
The Port Authority, which manages it and which Wiki also cites, has it as a single word.
http://www.panynj.gov/CommutingTravel/airports/html/laguardia.html
Oooh, Jess, you’ll be so sorry for that. I promise to try not to take advantage. :-)
Nonono! Take advantage of me all you like!
(Um…you know what I mean. (-: )
See, we keep track of the number of questions we get. If our questions go up over the course of a year, it helps us ask for a budget increase for the next fiscal year. And if our questions go down, as they have the past several years (we’re not alone in this), we have to pretend that we deserve a budget increase anyhow. :-) So, by all means, call or e-mail away!
Hee. I giggled because not only could I imagine doing this, I just spent thirty minutes or more today tracking down diacritical marks tht got completely garbled in typesetting words from Norwegian and Japanase (romanjii), so I couldn’t just look them up in the dictionary. For this one, I would’ve checked the FAA. They say it’s “La Guardia” and you know what they say about being good enough for the government. :)
Yeah, but the Port Authority’s .gov, too, and they’re right there! :-)
Yeah, I noted that! That’s part of what makes it so maddening. :-)
Heh. I’m amazed I didn’t come across it Googling. :-D
Deanna–*beams* You remind me of how I used to fact-check like crazy when I was doing medical transcription. Way to go, you!
As an Italian, I would say it should be ‘La Guardia.’
Chantal
And yep, I think “La Guardia” is right. One of the NYC copyeditors noted in comments that he thinks so, too, so I feel even more comfortable. :-)
Wow. I would never laugh at you, because that same thing would drive me absolutely nuts. I think I’ve always read/thought of it as “LaGuardia.” Neat!
Okay, where I would have lost it? When the Times had it two different ways. When all is hopelessly obscured in an ambiguity of conflicting sources, I frequently say, “Hey, this way is good enough for the Times, it’s good enough for me.”
And about New York City signage: For a while I was collecting sightings of misspelled street signs. The collection started with VALENINE AVE in the Bronx (it’s Valentine Avenue), and IIRC it had grown to more than ten signs by the time I decided I wasn’t interested enough to go photograph them all, find out who’s in charge of making the signs, get in touch with them about the typos, see what happened, and write a little piece about it.
1) You rock.
2) I am having not to cackle so I don’t wake up the child.
3) I would SO go nuts about it myself, too.
4) You do, totally, rock.
5) I’m going to go and cackle again.
Deanna,
It would appear that the real question in this case is “what would a stewardess think?†Much of my writing is technical and I work in a variety of industries. As you know, each group of people often has their own jargon. That jargon may or may not match up with the sources that you have checked. When I want to make sure I don’t offend people with the spelling or use of a particular jargon, I try to check what those people actually use. It can be quite specific. A cullet in glass working is a moil to the people who make the same object in plastic. Sometimes it even changes from one company to another. In the steam turbine business it is either a “blade†or “bucket†depending on which company you are dealing with. Am I wrong in my opinion? I am curious what your thoughts are since my experience with technical writing might not be appropriate to fiction. By the way, I have been living on a street for over 20 years and I still don’t know if it is a “drive†or “roadâ€. I can show you maps and government documents that have both.
Johnwrt1@yahoo.com
Wow. You are incredibly dedicated.
I generally do a Klingon lesson for Philcon, and I’ll probably do one for the Worldcon this year. Time to put that M.S. to work.
And remember, Klingon is the language of Shakespeare!
Deanna, you totally RAWK. :-)
La Guardia.
Spanish/Italian for “the guard.” (or in archaic Spanish/Italian: guardian)
Two words.
I’ve seen more and more Spanish/Italian surnames smushed together (ie DeArroyo, deArroyo, Dearroyo— should be de Arroyo) but in it’s really just lazy Americanized compounding, not proper Spanish.
My suspicions are probably true in an anglicanization process for immigrants and 1st/2nd generation families in the Americas.
-=Jeff=-
That way lies madness… *much sympathy* and a padded cell…
Heh. It would’ve been a funny article, though .:-)
I still think so. Maybe one o’ these days. :)
Why didn’t you call me, silly? Except for college, I’ve lived all my life within 7 miles of LGA.
The brown signs are older than the green ones. The likely situation: it was officially La Guardia, but since we all think of it as one word, it has smushed and become intercapped.
The first place I went was the PANYNJ website, where they consistently spell it LaGuardia. They own the place, so I’d go with their preference.
Aargh!! You see! Not even all my good NYC publishing friends can agree!
*goes back to work muttering*
“JFK” and “EWR” don’t roll quite so trippingly off the tongue; they are universally “Kennedy” and “Newark” in speech.
–>Clearly even NYers have their little regionalisms, since everyone I know refers to LGA as “LaGuardia” (pronounced “luhgwardeeuh”), and looks at me funny if I call it LGA (which I do on rare occasion). They vary 50/50 with “I’m flying out of Kennedy” or “I’m flying out of JFK”; and by “vary” I mean the same individual will refer to it both ways.
Of course, where I live (Flushing), “the airport” means LGA. It might be the reverse for people who live in, say, Rosedale. (Um, no reference to you; Rosedale is squarely in the flight paths out of Kennedy.)
Hi, John. For many things, I agree with you completely that it’s important to know how the character perceives something, which is what I discuss in that compounding post. For a place name, though, I’d like the spelling to reflect actuality rather than pronunciation.
I know, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you crazy(ier).
It really does fall into the category of “It makes no difference, so long as you are consistent.”
Hmmm. From a typesetting POV, if you made it “LaGuardia” and we had to break it across a line, it would be broken “La-Guardia.” And that would just look stupid. So I think you made the right call. (That I think this for utterly silly reasons is irrelevant.)
From a typesetting POV, if you made it “LaGuardia” and we had to break it across a line, it would be broken “La-Guardia.” And that would just look stupid.
Oh!! That is the best point yet, E! Yay! :-)
I don’t have a home page as such, but when I do, I’m putting that quote on it…
Email me anytime you want to know stuff like that about this marvelous city…
Long ago, there definitely was at least one sign that said BLEEKER ST along that fabled Greenwich Village street, which, as we all know, is actually named Bleecker St.
I hope they didn’t mention the Ver[r]az[z]ano[-]Narrows Bridge, which is even more problematic…
Deanna,
This is a question related to my earlier comment. The essence of the question is, “when does something become the responsibility of the author rather than the copyeditor?†If a stewardess would actually refer to La Guardia as LGA or some other term I think it is unreasonable to expect the copyeditor to point this out. The author would be wrong, but then authors often describe things that aren’t correct, such as the flexibility of a body after several hours. What is generally expected in this case? Does the copyeditor point it out if they happen know it is an error? Are they really supposed to do this work for the author? For the type of technical writing that I do (for my day job), we attempt to cross check each other, but we are really collaborators.
John
Deanna:
Your main concern is the name of the airport. The correct spelling of the name of the man they named it after is not your bailiwick. If the people who named the airport misspelled the name or changed it, that doesn’t affect what the name really is. Since the Port Authority of New York is in charge of it — not the FAA, not the people who make road signs — the answer would be LaGuardia.
If you think about it, you could come up with other examples of things named after people, places, or things, but with incorrect or variant spellings. For instance, I live near Seattle, which was named after Chief Sealth. The objection might be that this is simply an illustration of different ways of bringing a name into English, but isn’t that similar to what’s happened with La Guardia/LaGuardia?
Mark
As a person who spent over an hour this week making sure a character’s Ouija board was made by the right manufacturer, given its year of purchase, oh yes, I feel your pain.
Good luck making peace with the answer you settle for.
Ah, but you’re assuming that the Port Authority website is correct, rather than assuming that the official Port Authority sign at the entrance to the airport–the one that actually welcomes you, which is not just a road sign–is correct.
As I said in the post, I know “place names aren’t always as they should be.” Otherwise there would have been no need to go through all the rigmarole I have, since I would have accepted “La Guardia” upon first looking Fiorello up in the dictionary. There wouldn’t have been a post in the first place. :-)
Oh!! I’ve had to corrrect “Bleeker” in a novel before! :-)
This reminded me of you. *)
This post was hilarious. I do believe it is LaGuardia, not La Guardia, but that’s just me. :D
My eldest daughter subscribes to a children’s edutainment magazine “Which Way USA?” One of the latest additions was about Maryland, and each edition includes a map and gazetteer.
So, as a non-traditional writer/illustrator/editor, I have a BS in Geography and an AAS in Technical Illustration & Publication, who grew up in Maryland, I was anxious to see their map.
Not a complete map by any stretch, but it included a few place names that were familiar to me, and one on the southwest side of Baltimore caught my eye, “Reistertown.” Now, I knew of such a place growing up, and it was pronounced “RICERSTOWN”–note the S in the middle. Sure enough, I was able to confirm by looking at a host of other maps & atlases that it really is Reisterstown, with an S.
Now and again, headlines bemoan how little our children know about geography. Is it any wonder, given that a map with about 10 place names misspells one. On a side note, when I left Maryland ~1970, Lacrosse was the state sport, but according to Highlights for Children, Inc., it’s Medieval Jousting.
I didn’t read your original posting close enough. Believe me, I know that Web sites can be fallible. I update the internal Web site for the medical center I work at, which lists dozens of doctors and the issues they do or do not see. I can’t tell you how many corrections for spelling and ungrammatical sentences I’ve had to make because of the semi-literate supervisor who’s in charge of it.
That said, a Web site tends to be more official, because of the fact that it’s easily changed in case of error. With a huge painted sign, you can just plant flowers around it in case of error. But I suppose my comment above about my workplace just adds another uncertainty factor to everything.
Mark
By the way, is it okay to use website nowadays, instead of Web site?
Thanks.
I did end up looking the term up in The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, and they recommend “La Guardia.” That’s good enough for me.
Cute. :)
Web11 recommends “Web site,” but many of the publishers I work for specify “website” in their guidelines for copyeditors; I definitely prefer it as one word. Even CMS, in their online Q&A, recommends “website” for informal usage.
My experience, in more than 25 years of copyediting, is that the concept of a single, settled “official spelling” is often an editorial myth. The best one can do is decide on a source and stick with it. (I started out as a copy editor in the legal publishing field, where official spelling has importance apart from editorial consistency, but even there, the publishing house picked certain sources as reliable and just went with them.)