"bury the lede"

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Perhaps intended to distinguish (telegraphic) "Can you give better hed?" from "Can you give better head?"

------Original Message------
From: Arnold M. Zwicky
Sender: ADS-L
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Sent: Aug 25, 2008 10:42 AM
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] "bury the lede"

On Aug 25, 2008, at 7:25 AM, Larry Horn wrote:

> At 7:14 AM -0700 8/25/08, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>> On Aug 25, 2008, at 6:49 AM, Dave Wilton wrote:
>>
>>> "Lede" is a standard journalistic term and, indeed, it is so spelled
>>> to
>>> avoid confusion with the metal. Merriam-Webster has it from 1976.
>>> "Bury the
>>> lede/lead" is a common phrase among journos.
>>
>> related is journalistic "hed" for "head", that is a headline.
>>
>> arnold
>>
> --to forestall confusion with "heed" or "hayed"?  There's something
> odd here...

for a longer discussion, see:

   ML, 4/8/07: Hed, dek, lede, graf, tk: Live with it:
  http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004380.html

i was once told that the spelling "hed" for "head" 'headline' was to
distinguish this sense from other uses of "head", but that didn't
strike me as particularly plausible.  i suspect that the spellings are
mostly badges of the journalist's trade.

arnold

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