OK, this has been bugging me.

[jwgh]

[Poll #1811269]
I'm using radio buttons instead of checkboxes because I want people to take a stand.

Comments

[jwgh]

although I guess the AP style guide has always claimed that 'pled' is colloquial and should be avoided. Bah.

[urbeatle.livejournal.com]

If I can find the Google tool Language Log uses to track uses of words over time, I'll see if I can do an experiment.

[jwgh]

Oh, that ngram thing. This seems surprising all around.

[urbeatle.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I found it a little after I commented, and I put up a post. Looks like "pleaded" has always been more common, but "pled" vs. "plead" has gone back and forth.

[jwgh]

On an unrelated note: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=I+could+care+less%2CI+could+not+care+less&year_start=1920&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3