Grrr -- Deliberate dumbing down.

[libertango]

I was reading Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo, and he was using the term "lede" a lot.

I always get a bit twitchy about that. It's a variant spelling of "lead", as in "the lead paragraph of a news story."

But thinking about it, I realized another reason why spelling "lead" as "lede" is just plain offensive -- leaving aside my delicate orthographic sensibilities. See, the alleged reason for spelling it that way is because then it becomes obvious that you mean "lede" and not, say, the metal lead. In other words, it's a flag to your copy editors you mean the word just as an internal reference, and it shouldn't get out the door.

The problem, of course, is that this assumes your copy editors and/or proofreaders are blithering idiots who can't tell what you mean unless you misspell it for them.

Your copy editors. Your proofreaders.

Think about it.

Grrr.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever seen "lede." I am not impressed, but wonder if it would be an acceptable Scrabble play.

B

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

The online Scrabble dictionary at http://www.hasbro.com/scrabble/ says no.

That's a good question, though. My Random House College Dictionary doesn't list the word. My Oxford Universal Dictionary does, but it goes the way I'd expect:

"Lede Obs. [OE. léod, léode, -a Cf. G léute.] A people, nation; persons collectively; (one's own) people; a man --1650."

...which puts it later than Chaucer, but it always looks Chaucerian to me.

Lede and lead

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's absolutely great to have a special word for the "lede" of a story or the "lede" article in a publication. I've always used the word myself, since I learned it in Journo 101, and will continue to do so. For 40 years I've heard that the reason for the use of "lede" was the need to avoid confusion in the pressroom. Also that there are many anecdotes told about said confusion. But though I've asked repeatedly, nobody has ever been able to relate a single one of those anecdotes; they've only heard ABOUT the anecdotes, it seems, not the stories themselves. I've read that "lede" was the way "lead" -- in all its meanings and pronunciations -- was spelled in English until the 16th century. Don't know why it was changed, but language is like that. Based on that, and the fact that publishing has always involved two distinct groups (the technologists who deal with type and presses, and the content creators who write and edit), I speculate that the techies readily adopted the new, hip spelling in their domain, while the more traditionalist word-workers hung on to the conventional spelling except, perhaps, when writing about things technological. Heck, who is more obstinate about language than editors? Until I hear some anecdotes that make sense I remain unconvinced that the "confusion" explanation is anything but folklore.