Minor rant, but I’ve been seeing this more and more here on the dope and it drives me up a wall.
I just now did a post search covering all forums for the word “lead” just to get an idea of the frequency of the mistake. Here are the mistakes I found in just the past week, in order of most recent first:
Remamber when Mike Love from the Beach Boys went on that drunken rant where he criticized lots of popular artists, then when Bob Dylan spoke later he said: “I’d like to thank Mike Love for not mentioning me.”?
It’s an understandable mistake. The past tense of “read” is pronounced “red” but it’s still spelled “read”; so it makes at least a little bit of sense that people would try to make “lead” work the same way. Plus there actually is a word (the metal) that’s pronounced “led” but spelled “lead” (unless you’re talking about “Led Zeppelin”).
So I can see why some people might be [del]lead[/del] led astray,
Still, if you’re a grown-up, and English is your first language, you really ought to be able to figure this out.
I originally intended to list all uses of the past tense, both correct and incorrect, to get a feel for the frequency. Unfortunately the boards don’t let you search for 3-letter words.
Just now I tried a google search of the boards for “led” limiting the results to the past week. It only found three, one of which was part of a show title, but those results have to incomplete. They just have to be.
Come join us in the present day, grandpa! The AP Stylebook stopped capitalizing “internet” years ago, much like nobody capitalizes “phonograph” anymore either.
Hey, maybe we should start using a real language and give up on this POS inconsistent garble you call a language!!
Or we could just fix English. HAHAHAHA…
Wouldn’t the past tense of lead be some degenerate matter as lead (Pb) is generally formed from a supernova. Led is those efficient lights that everyone has now, so the past tense of led are incandescent.