60-second fix: lead and led

Should you write:

a) ‘Last autumn, I led the Pegasus project’, or
b) ‘Last autumn, I lead the Pegasus project’?

The answer is a). Led is the past tense and past participle of the verb to lead.

The confusion arises for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the verb to read keeps the same spelling when transferred to the past tense, even though the pronunciation changes (from ‘reed’ to ‘red’). Why doesn’t lead follow the same rule? Unfortunately, the answer is the same as ever: because English is a tricksy and unpredictable beast.

Secondly, lead has several meanings – one as a verb, as mentioned above, and several as a noun. And to make things more confusing, one of the noun meanings rhymes with led.

lead (verb)
–  to guide or direct (pronounced ‘leed’)

lead (noun)
–  an important and instructive piece of information  (pronounced ‘leed’)
–  the advance position in a race or competition  (pronounced ‘leed’)
–  a leash or connecting cable  (pronounced ‘leed’)
–  a soft, malleable heavy metal (pronounced ‘led’)

However, while the word has many meanings, you need to remember only two spellings:

In the present tense, or when it’s a noun, it’s always lead
In the past tense, it’s always led.

On hearing this, Page decided to make it the band’s name. He dropped the ‘a’ from lead at the suggestion of his manager, so that people would understand that it was a play on heavy metal, and not pronounce it incorrectly. So now you know.

Many thanks to Gill Hepworth (@GillyHep) for suggesting this 60-second fix. For an index of past 60-second fixes, visit our 60-second quiz page.

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Author: Cathy Relf

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Cathy is a certified word and editing expert, having worked as a sub-editor, editor and copywriter at, to name a few, the Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, Which? and The Grocer.