How the Written Universe Works part 3: Lay, Lie, Laid #amwriting

Lie and lay always catch me out, thanks for this article, Connie 🤔

Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Every now and then, the most paradoxical mystery in the written universe rears its head—the question, “Is it lay, lie, or what?” Today we will revisit one of the more misused verbs in the English language: the many tenses and uses of the verb ‘lay.’

How the written universe works 3In the written narrative, the many forms of this verb are what antimatter is to ordinary matter. When used improperly, things unravel. The problem is, we routinely use the words lay and lie and all their forms incorrectly as a matter of habit in our daily speech.

We are accustomed to hearing the wrong use of verb forms in conversation. However, we notice incorrect usage when reading. This paradox causes confusion for our readers when we misuse the verb “lay” and all its tenses in a narrative.

Don’t feel alone in this. Even editors struggle with the words lay, lie, and laid…

View original post 701 more words

2 thoughts on “How the Written Universe Works part 3: Lay, Lie, Laid #amwriting

DON'T BE SHY - LEAVE A REPLY

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.