The lede is the most important part of a news story. What is a lede?
It’s not a made up word. It’s pronounced lead — as in “I am in the lead,” but when newspapers were printed back in the day people used to get it confused with lead (the metal) which was in the ink. So to clear the confusion between production matters (how much lead is in the ink) and editorial matters they changed the spelling.
There are two basic ledes, the hard lede and the soft lede.
I am personally a fan of the hard lede. Soft ledes are funner to write and more fulfilling, but they can also lose the reader and newspapers already have a problem with losing readers.
The hard lede should be quick and to the point and give the reader the basic information in the story.
Here is a lede for the story of Little Red Ridding Hood
“A 10-year-old girl and her bed-ridden grandmother escaped death yesterday after a woodsman hacked open a cross-dressing wolf that swallowed them whole.”
Feel free to leave more ledes for fairy tales in the comments.
You didn’t explain the difference between hard and soft.
That is a different post my friend, a different post indeed.
Then how are we supposed to leave them in the comments?
Just practice your hard ledes right now. Yeesh, do I have to kick you off my blog Oliver.
Sheesh, all right.
“Three pigs were found dead in an apparent double murder/suicide early this morning in South LA. The gruesome scene was discovered by a cross-dressing wolf.”
I think the term “lead” (pronounded “led” like the metal) as used in publishing goes back to the age of hot metal composition — even before the linotype machine, which melted lead(mixed with tin and antimony) to fill molds for the letters and then allowed compositon and typesitting at the same time.
Before the linotype it was all done by hand, one letter at a time. I also seem to remember that a “lead” or a “lead slug” was also a term for a spacer between words. I don’t believe it has anything to do with the news inks, most of which were made with other stuff. (Lead appears to be for colors.)
Agriculturalists spouse used a carving utensil to sever trailing appendages of three sightless rodents.