There's a dreadful prevalence of "lead" being typed instead of "led" (past tense of the verb "to lead").
I suspect autowossits, but "lead" can be confusing. However, none of the contexts encountered have had any trace of the metal, so my inner voice says "leeeed" and I lose the plot and my attention.
He lead the horse out of the sta... huh wot?!
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@sunflowerinrain I've noticed this too; I suppose it could be from the pronunciation of the metal. My guess was that it came from analogy with "to read" - the present tense is formed as for the verb "to lead", but of the "read"/"red" homophone pair, you choose the opposite spelling for the past tense from what you'd choose of the "lead"/"led" pair.
@khird
I wasn't clear about the pronunciation, was I? Oops.
I meant that if I don't detect metal in the surrounding text, I automatically hear it as leeeed and am jolted by the present tense.
Read doesn't have the same problem because I hear whichever tense is appropriate for the context.
Spelling...
Ah, good ol' English.