Lead, Lead, Led, Read, Read, Red

A brief public service announcement from the Office of Grammatical Pedantry:

The past tense of the verb “to lead” is spelled “led,” not “lead.”

More and more lately, I’ve been seeing this error. I blame that quirky verb “to read” and the natural human desire for consistency.

But come on, this is the English language. What’s consistency?

Even cultural bastions like The New York Times and The Boston Globe aren’t immune. From The Boston Globe (3/31/19):

“The incident lead to an 11-day inpatient hospital stay…”

For what it’s worth, the spelling error isn’t the most disturbing thing in that article, which is about kids being hospitalized for Fortnite addictions, but still. Ugh.

You might be wondering, Well why shouldn’t “lead” and “read” work the same way? I don’t have a real answer, but I do have a theory, completely ungrounded in anything but my own guesswork:

• Led (v.) is the past tense of Lead (v.), but
• Red (adj.) is a color, so
• Read (v.) is the past tense of Read (v.), while
• Lead (n.) is a kind of metal, or what a pencil uses to write (but not really).

Here’s a handy mnemonic for you to use: If you don’t use “led,” I’ll see red.

And if you don’t believe me, here’s Merriam-Webster on the subject:

There is some persistent confusion about lead and led. Or, we should say, there is confusion about the leads and led. Lead is both a noun and a verb, as most people know. There are several unrelated nouns spelled lead: one most commonly refers to a metal (as in, “The paint was made with lead”), and the other most commonly refers to a position of advantage (as in, “Our team was in the lead”). The verb lead is pronounced /LEED/, with a long e; the noun that refers to a position or advantage is also pronounced /LEED/, with a long e; the noun that refers to the metal, however, is pronounced /LED/, with a short e. To this moderately convoluted situation, add the past tense and past participle of the verb lead, which is led and pronounced like the metal noun lead with a short e. The homophonic confusion leads to homographic confusion, and you will therefore occasionally see lead in constructions where led is called for (as in, “She lead the ducklings to safety” instead of “She led the ducklings to safety”). The correct past and past participle of lead is spelled led. If you aren’t sure whether to use led or lead as the verb in your sentence, try reading it aloud to yourself. If the verb is pronounced /LED/, use led.

So please, in your writing, lead by example so everyone who might read you can learn that lead is not like read, and if you’ve already led by example, then everyone who might have read you owes you a debt of gratitude for taking the lead on led so we can put this stupid mistake to bed.