Joyce Vance is a frequent guest on MSNBC. She’s full of legal smarts, but this PSA is misguided. As Garner’s Modern English Usage points out, “pleaded, the strongly predominant form in both AmE and BrE, is always the best choice.” Here’s an OCA post with much more on the matter: The past plead.Public service announcement: its pled, not pleaded. cc: @PreetBharara
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) June 13, 2023
And an additional PSA:
The word needed in the tweet above is it’s. Follow Jessica Mitford’s helpful (?) guidance in Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (1979):
When is it its ? When it’s not it is.[For future reference: today a twice-impeached, twice-indicted, once-held-liable disgraced former president pleaded not guilty to charges concerning the retention, concealment, and mishandling of classified materials. Here’s that arraignment day.]
When is it it’s ? When it is it is.
comments: 4
As with "hanged" and "hung," a case could be made for maintaining two past tense forms for different contexts. I would never say "She pled for more time to write her essay," but I have no problem with "She pled guilty."
Garner notes that pled is less common outside legal contexts. I think I hear nothing but pled on the news. But as Garner notes, he pleaded guilty outnumbers he pled guilty, 3 to 1 (Google Ngram Viewer). I don’t know why Joyce Vance insists that pleaded is wrong. Mia Farrow (!) corrected her on Twitter, but Vance replied “I will die on this hill.”
There’s also sped and speeded. Garner says sped prevails, with the exception of speeded up. I sped to the scene. Some people claim that Robert Johnson’s records were speeded up to make them sound more exciting. Both those sentences sound right to me. I would refer to the sped-up recordings, but there sped is the past participle.
By the way, I always have to check hanged and hung.
I'm an Old English/strong verb diehard. I probably over-correct/back-fill or whatever term is appropriate. They all sound right to me.
I recently changed pled to pleaded on my own blog because the dotted red line was telling me that pled was incorrect, but it hurt me to do so.
Interesting. I just tried pled in iA Writer and Pages — it’s okay in both.
Post a Comment