Lay or lie? How to pick the right word.

Below is a transcript of the video.

Lie or lay. People will judge you if you pick the wrong one.

Let’s start with lay. You use this word to describe something you do to an object. As in:

I lay the book on the desk.

Here I’m doing something to the book. 

In contrast, lie is something you do to yourself. For example:

I lie on the sofa after lunch every day. 

No here’s what’s confusing. The past tense of lie is lay, so we’d say:

I lay on the sofa after lunch yesterday.

But it’s wrong to say:

I lay on the sofa every day.

You can lay a book, a cushion, a hat on the sofa. But you can’t lay yourself every day on the sofa if you’re talking in the present tense.

To keep those grammar pedants at bay, you have to use lie.

For more writing advice, enrol in my online course, Writing With Confidence, available at the Doris and Bertie Writing School.

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