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etymologyonline says at least 1965. Other sources date to 1950. The term was invented to distinguish the head paragraph of a story specifically because it wou
by SeanLuke 3y ago
etymologyonline says at least 1965. Other sources date to 1950.
The term was invented to distinguish the head paragraph of a story specifically because it would cause confusion with "lead", which at the time was widely used in newspapers to refer to lead type and to actual strips used to add spacing between lines (indeed it's still called "leading" in typesetting). It is standard newspaper jargon. But more importantly, "bury the lede" is specifically a newspaper phrase. I think that saying it should be changed to "lead" for the uninformed is like saying that you should change "Smalltalk" to "Small Talk" when addressing the uniformed. No! It's Smalltalk.
More importantly, HN is definitely not the uniformed when it comes to newspaper printing technology and journalism.
- crazygringo 3y agoBut "lead" ("what leads in") is what it derives from, and nobody uses lead type anymore. So any motivation for "lede" is gone, except tradition of a handful of decades. Every authoritative source says "bury the lead" is a perfectly acceptable variant, and nowadays there's no reason not to return to it. English spelling is already complicated enough that the last thing we need to be doing is to be introducing extra spelling variations.