5 ms·
Bonus points for articles that start with a tldr and don't try to bury the lead
by crmrc114 2y ago
Bonus points for articles that start with a tldr and don't try to bury the lead
- anamexis 2y agoFYI it's "bury the lede," a lede being the introductory section of a news story.
- sharkjacobs 2y agoI would argue that there's no reason to continue misspelling "lead" as "lede" outside of a context where you are worried about conflating the "lead" paragraph with the "lead" piece of metal which was used as a spacer between words in a Linotype machine
- jzb 2y agoIt's not a misspelling, it's jargon. FWIW I prefer it and I think it's valuable to preserve in part because people who dig into it a bit learn about the history of the term and practice of putting publications (especially newspapers) together.
- Maxatar 2y agoYou can prefer one spelling over another, absolutely, but it's a bit too strong to say someone using the actual word "lead" is incorrect.
- jzb 2y agoOh, I wouldn't correct someone for saying "lead" -- or "intro" or any other variant that makes sense. Leed is right out, though.
- keybored 2y agoIf the choice is betwixt overloading a morpheme and having two distinct I shall take the latter.
- jameshart 2y agoRight. Saying people outside the industry should feel free to use ‘lead’ instead of ‘lede’ is like saying people outside the tech business should feel free to talk about ‘kilobites’.
- ziddoap 2y ago>I would argue that there's no reason to continue misspelling "lead" as "lede" Does it still count as misspelling when "lede" is in the dictionary (Merriam Websters & Cambridge & Oxford)? Pretty sure it's just a word at that point, right?
- Maxatar 2y agoThe word "lede" was introduced in the 1970s as an alternative spelling for the word "lead" to resolve ambiguity between the leading paragraph of an article and the metal "lead" which was used in typesetting. It didn't even become popular until the 1980s. In fact, prior to the 1980s, it was indeed spelled "bury the lead". Here for example is an excerpt from a book about newswriting from the 1970s which uses "lead" as the spelling: https://books.google.ca/books?id=3IxbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22bury+the+lead%22&pgis=1&redir_esc=y#search_anchor https://books.google.ca/books?id=3IxbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22bury+the+...
- tedden 2y ago[dead]
- havblue 2y agoMeanwhile, the group "Led Zeppelin" also avoided the ambiguous spelling to prevent people from pronouncing their name "leed zeppelin". You can't win with lead.
- btown 2y agoHuh, didn't know that! Via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Led_Zeppelin#Formation:_1966%E2%80%931968 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Led_Zeppelin#Formation:_1966%E... : > One account of how the new band's name was chosen held that Moon and Entwistle had suggested that a supergroup with Page and Beck would go down like a "lead balloon", an idiom for being very unsuccessful or unpopular.[21] The group dropped the 'a' in lead at the suggestion of [manager] Peter Grant, so that those unfamiliar with the term would not pronounce it "leed".[22] The word "balloon" was replaced by "zeppelin", a word which, according to music journalist Keith Shadwick, brought "the perfect combination of heavy and light, combustibility and grace" to Page's mind.[21] It certainly doesn't help that in a rock context, "lead guitar" is very much pronounced with a long e! And one could be forgiven for thinking that a formation of flying things would necessarily have one member in the lead position. I'm glad they had the foresight to keep us from being led astray!
- samatman 2y ago
- lmm 2y agoThat's a pretentious, anachronistic affectation - the phrase predates the use of "lede".
- colechristensen 2y agoThe Washington Post headline: >'The Eagle Has Landed' – Two Men Walk on the Moon That is the entire story, in the headline as it should be. I want to know more! The first sentence should add the most relevant added information. It shouldn't be "As a child Neil Armstrong always dreamed about..." burying the next most important detail 2/3 through the article. The importance/relevance/interest should start high, end low. Inverted pyramid.
- roca 2y agoI have a theory that a lot of journalists really wanted to be novelists. When they get a chance to write a long-form article they can't resist the urge to flex their stylistic muscles; "look at me, I'm a Serious Writer".
- colechristensen 2y agoI was talking to a journalist who worked for a major venue and the metric she cared about was number of seconds a user stayed on an article. She didn't say "this is the most important..." she just talked about it for 20 minutes and the different results from different demographics and link sources so it was quite obvious. So that's what journalists are measured by these days apparently, how long a piece can keep the attention of a user. Ironically she worked for what I would consider one of the best players in terms of not writing attention grabbing BS. (I won't mention which here)
- SoftTalker 2y agoThat's the "inverted pyramid" organization that is (or was) taught in journalism. The way it was explained to me is: imagine the reader stops at the headline. Or after reading the first sentence. Or after the first paragraph, etc. In any case, they should have read the most important facts of the story up that point.
- bregma 2y agoHoly cow, don't look for recipes on the web. If you're luck any ingredients and instructions are only 2/3 through. More often 23 pages through.
- jzb 2y agoNote that "bury the lede" isn't really about "make the reader get to the end to find out the answer" but when a reporter/writer emphasizes the wrong part of a story in the intro then you'd say they buried the lede. Like, if the first graf is all about a politician attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Podunk, IL and then in the third graf you have "at the rally, he called for all left-handed people to be put in jail" then you've buried the lede. If you have in the first graf "so-and-so proposed a radical, and illegal, prosecution of a minority group" it's not burying the lede to make the reader get to the third graf to find out it's against left-handed people. Annoying, perhaps, but not technically burying the lede. :)