Lay and Lie

Lay is a transitive verb, meaning it takes an object: Lay the book on the table.

Lie is intransitive, meaning no object: I lie here staring at the ceiling.

It's the past tense and past participle forms the get confusing. They are:

lie/lay/lain

lay/laid/laid

If you forget those, you can always check a dictionary.

Tags: COPY EDITING, GRAMMAR, I LAY DOWN OR I LAID DOWN, LAY AND LIE

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2024 at 4:29 pm and is filed under this week's podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.