lede

adj

1. Initialism of live end dead end.

noun

Etymology: A deliberate misspelling of lead, originally used in instructions given to printers to indicate which paragraphs constitute the lede, intended to avoid confusion with the word lead which may actually appear in the text of an article. Compare dek (“subhead”) (modified from deck) and hed (“headline”) (from head).

1. The introductory paragraph or paragraphs of a newspaper, or a news or other type of article; the lead or lead-in.

   “Readers usually see the lead picture and read its caption first, before reading the lede of the article, so the article lede should not be a repetition of the caption.”

   “"How can Mr. On-line Guy learn to be a journalist if he didn't go through what I went through?" they [newspaper journalists] ask. "I needed the city editor to tell me how to write a graceful sentence, and I was a year into the job before I could craft a decent lede?"”

verb

Etymology: See lead.

1. Obsolete spelling of lead (“to guide”).