Lay Your Book Down and Lie Down for a Rest! I Want to Tell You Something.

If it’s hard to read your computer screen lying down, then you may sit up, but please pay attention! The Grammar Guru is having a cow. I’ve been surfing a bit this morning, and I am appalled by the writers, professional and non, who do not understand how to use the verbs lay and lie.

It  really isn’t that difficult. The confusion comes from the past tense of lie being lay. It seems to put people’s brains in knots.

Lay is something that you do to something, generally, and it’s generally an active sort of verb. (It means to place or put.) Chickens lay eggs. We lay (set) the table for supper. You can lay your papers on the desk. If you did it in the past, you laid it. If you are doing the acting on an animate object, it can also be correct to use lay, as in “I need to lay the baby on the bed.” or “Lay the unconscious victim on a firm surface to perform CPR.” If it’s in progress, it’s laying, as in “She is laying the table for lunch.”

Lie, in the sense of being horizontal (as opposed to telling falsehoods), is generally something that we do to ourselves, and it’s more passive in nature. We let sleeping dogs lie. We lie down for a nap. If we did it in the past, we lay. For example, He lay down for a nap two hours ago. If we are continuing to do it, we are lying, as in “He’s lying in the bed…been there all morning!”

One trick that works about 99 percent of the time (unless you’re talking about chickens) is to replace lie / lay with the word “place.” For example, “place the books on the table” makes sense, so you’d use lay. But “place down for a nap” is nonsense—use lie.

Hope this helps to clear up the confusion.

Tags: usage