“Had mislead” or “had misled”: which is correct?

Why people get it wrong

People often expect mislead to work like read, which looks the same in every form. But mislead follows lead: lead → led, so mislead → misled. Because the past participle misled is used less often, people fall back on the base form.

What kind of mistake it is

It’s a verb tense error related to the misuse of the past participle form of the verb mislead. The correct past participle is misled, not mislead.

Examples with had misled

• She realized that the advertisement had misled her.
• He had misled the team with false information.
• They claimed the map had misled them during the hike.