"Fate, the saviors of fools, little children and the ship named Enterprise"
- Commander William T. Riker, posted in reference to blog title.

Pled Vs. Pleaded

I have noticed since working at a television station during the live news broadcasts, that there has been a change from the news I remembered watching growing up.  The news anchor used to commonly say 'pled' when they talked about a plea at a court case, but now, you hear them say 'pleaded'.  Why is this?  I think it is because it makes the criminal look more guilty without saying they are guilty.  They pleaded to the judge sounds a lot worse than they pled to the judge.  Pleaded used to be the only grammatically correct version, but they are both considered by Webster to be appropriate.  Here are a couple interesting discussions online about this already:

http://boaltalk.blogspot.com/2008/02/pleaded-v-pled.html

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2006/May/28/ferguson-using-pled-and-pleaded/

Just an semantic observation I wanted to share.  Any thoughts on this?

Maybe it is the Mandala Effect?