How popular is the word ‘Lede’? Why should it be ‘Political Ledes,’ not ‘Political Catches / Leads ’?

Question

I noticed that there is a column called the day of the week’s ‘Political Ledes’ written by Mark Halperin in Time magazine. Today’s (August 17) ‘Political Ledes’ picks up headlines of

New York Times: “Romney Says He Paid at Least 13% in Income Taxes”

Washington Post: “Obama Steps Up Portrayal of Romney, Ryan as Out of Touch with Middle America”

Wall Street Journal: “Campaigns Seek Positives in Negative Tone,” and three other news sources.

As I was unfamiliar with the word, ‘Lede’ I checked Cambridge, Merriam-Webster, and Oxford online dictionary. Only Merriam-Webster registers ‘lede’ with the definition - ‘the introductory section of a news story that is intended to entice the reader to read the full story’.

Google Ngram registers both ‘lede’ and ‘ledes.’ The usage of ‘lede’ continues to decline from the peak during 1840 – 1860, while the latter has been also consistently declining after the peak of usage during 1920 -1980.

Isn’t ‘lede’ an outdated word, or still is popular?

The choice of word of course belongs to the taste and up to the freedom of authors, but I wonder why the Time magazine is using ‘”Political ‘Ledes’” which isn’t registered in neither Cambridge or Oxford English Dictionary instead of simply saying “‘Political ‘Leads, (or Catches)’” which I think is easier to understand and is more current.

MicroSoft spell-checker keeps urging me to correct the spelling of ‘lede’ at this very moment I’m typing this question.

Answer 1

As the NYTimes.com blog The Lede explains:

Lede derives from an intentional misspelling of the word “lead” (“lede” rhymes with “breed”), which developed in the newspaper industry to avoid confusion with the kind of metal used in printing presses (“lead” rhymes with “bread”). The lede of a newspaper’s front page is the main story; the lede of an article is the way it begins: the statement of facts or the anecdote that the writer lays out to lead readers into a story.

It's a term specific to journalism, the newspaper industry in particular.

Of the 11 instances of lede that show up in the Corpus of Contemporary American English that aren't someone's name (belonging to one Cliff Lede), all are journalistic references from newspapers or news magazines.

Answer 2

I consider lede journalism jargon. It is not popular in the public. They're probably using it to show that they're taking the main points of numerous news stories. Lede is defined, as you said, as the introductory section of a news story that is intended to pique the reader's interest so he or she reads the entire story.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, lede may have been used "to distinguish this sense from other possible meanings of the word, perhaps especially the molten lead used in typesetting machines."

Answer 3

I first encountered "lede" on English Wikipedia, where some prominent editors and editing tools/scripts even use the term. Nonetheless, I've noticed that most Wikipedians tend to be unfamiliar with it, and there's been plenty of discussion on Wikipedia about it, e.g. Talk:Lead Paragraph and Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section . If you read through it all (phew!), you'll find that "lede" is definitely not popular.

Answer 4

Dear Time Magazine: "LEDES" Looks pretentious and awkward, especially since modern readers just see a typo of LEADS. These headlines are LEADS - not LEDES !

Answer 5

Lede is only one of a number of intentionally misspelled content labels in U.S. publishing. Others are hed, dek, subhed, graf, and TK (a placeholder/marker signifying "content still to come"). Presumably, the fact that hed, dek, lede, graf, etc., have no legitimate reason to appear in the final version of the publication (unlike, in some instances, head, deck, lead, and graph) makes them easier to detect and remove before the issue goes to press than head, deck, lead, graph, etc., would be. The idea of adopting this bit of shop talk as a regular column title must have sounded brilliant to someone with more authority than judgment at Time magazine.

As to why article manuscripts need these various labels at all, the reason is that, at some point in the layout phase of the publishing process, a bleary-eyed functionary plows through various articles slated for publication in the next issue and mechanically applies a pre-established style to each labeled component. Any simple, inexpensive measure that helps this person avoid misapplying styles—or mistaking labels for content—is not to be dismissed lightly.

I am aware of at least one U.S. publication that adopted the tactic of filling caption boxes not with "Tktktktktktktkttk," but with an intentionally absurd sentence along the lines of "The purple hippopotamus umbrella contrapuntal washbasin despair." I'm aware of it because it showed up as the caption for two different photos on the same page of the published magazine. No doubt the same thing has happened with "Lorem ipsum dolor" greeking and with "Tktktktktktktktk," too. But given the choice, I'd rather present readers with Tktktktktktktktk than with purple hippopotamus umbrellas when I overlook a TK in a final layout.