He Lead Them to Victory!  

Posted by Benjie in


Some of you will not understand why the title displays today's "Word Police" entry. But perhaps by the end of your reading you to will be able to distinguish more nuances of the English language.

In our current example the writer has chosen to use a word not related to the present tense word to indicate past tense. Let me help you out --

Lead (pronounced with the long 'e' sound: ee) is a verb in its present tense, suggesting that the leading is in process (or should be in process) "Can he lead us to victory?"

Lead (pronounced with the short 'e' sound: eh) is a soft, heavy metal (symbol: Pb; atomic number: 82--don't ask me, go check your periodic table!). It shouldn't be confused with soft rock or heavy metal, though. This word can also be used to great advantage in the colloquial expression "Get the lead out!"

The offense occurs so often when people use our second example to denote the past tense of our first. The past tense, instead, should simply drop the 'a' and find its spelling as led (pronounced like our second example today). Thus, our title would rightly read "He led them to victory!" indicating a fixed past action of leading.

Have a nice day.

This entry was posted on 19 November 2008 at 4:37 PM and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

2 Reader Response(s)

Only today I ground my teeth when I saw this blunder in an article in the local (Alvin, TX) newspaper.

5:08 PM

We can thank the blogosphere for many of these problems creeping into the written word.

5:35 PM

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