A not guilty verdict does not mean the judge or jury concluded that the. It was almost nonexistent in English literature until the 1970s, when it started to become more popular in American literature, and its popularity has been rising ever since. In some countries, this verdict is not proven, which is a better description. not guilty noun A person who has been acquitted of a crime. not guilty noun A member of a jury or tribunal supporting acquittal, or a vote cast in support of acquittal. ![]() The use of “pled” is a relatively recent phenomenon. not guilty noun A verdict or formal finding by the legal system that a defendant is not culpable for the crime with which the defendant was charged. ![]() And, indeed, the Chicago Manual of Style tells us to avoid “pled” completely. When a significant change (such as a new irregular past tense of a verb) is introduced into the grammar of spoken and informal written English, manuals of style are generally reluctant to include the new variant in their guidelines until it has been popular for such a long time that it can itself be considered “traditional”. The reason is that when grammarians say that something is “wrong”, what they actually mean is that it is “non-standard”, and since English does not have any organization regulating the “standard”, it usually boils down to what influential style guides, such as the Chicago Manual of Style, have to say about the issue. So, why do grammarians keep telling us that “pled” is wrong? There have even been online polls indicating that most Americans prefer “pled” to “pleaded”. bleed – bled, breed – bred, feed – fed), so the change is phonetically justified. However, “read” and “lead” (and related forms like “unread”), which are the only other English verbs ending with “ead” pronounced as / iːd/ (“eed”), both change to / ɛd/ (“ed”) in the past tense -so why not “plead”?įurthermore, several -eed verbs also change to -ed (e.g. It may surprise you that the only form considered correct by traditional grammarians is “pleaded guilty” (pronounced PLEE-did). So far, so good, but what if the action took place in the past -does that mean that you pleaded guilty? Or pled guilty? ![]() If you “plead guilty”, it means that you state in court that you are guilty of a crime. It will teach you how to avoid mistakes with commas, prepositions, irregular verbs, and much more. Tip: See my list of the Most Common Mistakes in English.
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