A bit of housekeeping, though it’s a big bit.

Alert readers of this blog may have noticed that the word for the beginning part of an article is spelled two different ways here and in other material for B/R writers. Here, it’s “lead.” Everywhere else—and in some posts on the blog—it’s “lede.”

I’ve spelled it lede for most of my career, thinking that was the old-timey, ink-stained wretchish, newspaper way of spelling it, and being an old-timey ink-stained wretch who grew up in newspapers, I go for that sort of thing.
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My distaste for a rosy view of an imagined past blinded me to the idea that “lede” is a useful spelling. There’s no risk of confusion or ambiguity with synonyms, as there is with “lead.” And while this is a minor thing, I think there’s some value in journalism having a shared language. We write about heds and grafs and ledes when we’re talking to each other. It’s a signal that we’re over here talking shop.

So lede it is. I’m going to go back and change all the spellings of “lead” that I can find on this blog to “lede,” with an explanatory note where possible. And I’ll try to be quick about it. I’ll get the led out.