FromMiddle Englishlede,leode(“man; human being, person; lord, prince; God; sir; group, kind; race; a people, nation; human race; land, real property”)[and other forms],[1] from three closely related words:
Old Englishlēod(“man; chief, leader; (poetic) prince; a people, people group; nation”);
Sweet, yes sweet is over (beyond) measure / The marrying for the younglede (people); / Most sweet it is, I say yet (once more), / When it goes with the rede (counsel) of the elders.
A translation of part of the first stanza of a song composedc. 1650 by the West Frisian poetGysbert Japiks (1603–1666): “Swíet, ja swíet is 't, oer 'e míete / 'T Boáskien fóar 'e jongelie; / Kreftich swíet is 't, sizz' ik jíette, / As it giet mei âlders ríe.”
c.1870s, “Transition English: From the Conquest toChaucer.—a.d. 1066 toa.d. 1352 [Sir Cleges.]”, inHenry Morley, editor,Shorter English Poems (Cassell’s Library of English Literature), London, Paris:Cassell & Company,[…],→OCLC,page28, column 2, lines409–412:
Gramércy, liegé King, / This is to me a comforting: / I tell you sickerly / For to have land orlede / Or other riches, so God me speed, / It is too much for me.
Spelling modernized by the editor from a late-14th – early-15th-century text.
The lede of thisarticle is itsfirstparagraph, which says, “One of the greatest sensations in Whitman county was caused yesterday afternoon when Sheriff Canutt arrested Dr. T. D. Ferguson upon a charge of manslaughter. The information says that Dr. Ferguson committed the crime on April 21, 1904, ‘by unlawfully, willfully and feloniously slaying and killing one Agnes R. Downs.’” Thehed (i.e., theheadline, using a similarly misspelled form) says, “A prominent physician is charged with manslaughter”.
A deliberate misspelling oflead, originally used in instructions given to printers to indicate which paragraphs constitute the lede, intended to avoid confusion with the wordlead which may actually appear in the text of an article.[3][4] Comparedek(“subhead”) (modified fromdeck) andhed(“headline”) (fromhead).
1979, J. W. Click, Russell N. Baird,Magazine Editing and Production, 2nd edition, Dubuque, Iowa:W[illiam] C. Brown,→ISBN, page90:
Readers usually see the lead picture and read its caption first, before reading thelede of the article, so the articlelede should not be a repetition of the caption.
1999,Mike Godwin, “Who’s a Journalist?—II: Welcome the New Journalists on the Internet”, inRobert H. Giles, Robert W. Snyder, editors,What’s Next?: Problems & Prospects of Journalism, New Brunswick, N.J., London:Transaction Publishers, published2001,→ISBN,page46:
"How can Mr. On-line Guy learn to be a journalist if he didn't go through what I went through?" they [newspaper journalists] ask. "I needed the city editor to tell me how to write a graceful sentence, and I was a year into the job before I could craft a decentlede?"
I was thrilled to be in possession of this nugget, which could probably take over thelede of my story. This essentially and truly implicated one of the most respected homicide detectives in Boston, all based on my initial tip.
Thelede (as we spell it) story in today's NYT [The New York Times] is all about their new poll showing that[John] McCain is hurting himself, not[Barack] Obama, with the attacks.[…] If something's thelede in the NYT, it tends to get discussed on cable TV all day, etc.
2018, Branden Salas, “Reporting for Print Media”, inBasic Concept of Journalism, Waltham Abbey, Essex: Ed-Tech Press, published2020,→ISBN,page253:
Like all forms of writing, there's no hard and fast rule about what makes a greatlede. A goodlede changes depending on the story you're writing.[…]Ledes vary wildly, but you'll start to notice patterns and, more importantly, what kinds ofledes you like and feel are effective.
2019, Naveed Saleh, “Narrative: Beginnings, Middles, and Ends”, inThe Writer’s Guide to Self-editing: Essential Tips for Online and Print Publishing, Jefferson, N.C.:McFarland & Company,→ISBN, part VII (Global Considerations),page225:
Here are some different types ofledes:[…] · Scenarioledes use narrative elements to describe a place of particular importance to the story. / · Narrativeledes begin at a chronological beginning.[…] · First-person anecdotalledes begin with a relevant anecdote that involves the writer. Service and celebrity pieces often begin with first-personledes.
The word, which has entered ordinary usage, was originally journalistic jargon. In 1990, the American author and journalistWilliam Safire (1929–2009) was still able to say: “You will not find this spelling in dictionaries; it is still an insiders' variant, steadily growing in frequency of use.[…] Willlede break out of its insider status and find its way into general use?[…] To suggest this is becoming standard would be misledeing[…] But it has earned its place as a variant spelling, soon to overtake the original spelling for the beginning of a news article.”[5]
^Alternatively, it has been claimed that the word was misspelled to avoid confusion withlead(“strip of type metal used for positioning type in the frame”) (pronounced/lɛd/): see“The Maven’s Word of the Day: lede”, inRandom House[1], 2000 November 28, archived fromthe original on17 April 2001.
, Oxford:Oxford University Press, December 2020.
lead paragraph on Wikipedia.Wikipedia