Lie or Lay: The Evil Verbs

I have mixed up lie and lay on every grammar quiz I have ever taken. No more! I’m determined to nail these two bad boys!

First off, I made myself a chart. It helped me quickly see why I keep mixing them up: lay does double duty. Not only is it its own verb, it’s also the past tense of lie.

Word	Verb Type	Definition	Conjugation	Examples
lay	transitive verb (must have a direct object)	To beat, set down, place, or bring forth	lay, laid, laid, laying	Hens lay eggs. My hen has laid many eggs. She laid three eggs on my couch yesterday. She is laying another one right now.
lie	intransitive verb (can’t have a direct object)	To rest or recline	lie, lay, lain, lying	Grammar gives me a headache. I need to lie down. Where should I lay? My couch is covered with eggs. Those eggs have lain there all day. They shouldn’t be lying on my couch.

 
Now for the hard part—application! Choose the correct word for each sentence below. The secret to success is to first determine if the sentence has a direct object. Then determine what tense you need. Good luck!

1. I told my hen  to ___ her eggs outside. (Hint: eggs are the direct object!)

2. My hen told me to go ___ down in the middle of the road. (Hint: no direct object for me!)

3. I told my hen that I’ve ____  in the middle of the road before.

4. I __ there for over an hour and I wasn’t hit by a single car. (Hint: double duty!)

5. My hen should try ____ her eggs in the road instead of on my couch.

6. If my hen had ____ her eggs on the road, I would be _______ on my couch right now.

Answers: lay, lie, lain, lay, laying, laid, lying

Breaking the Double Spacing Habit

Remember typing class. Period, space, space. If you type on a personal computer, delete this instruction from your memory. Now!

Welcome to keyboarding class. Period, space. That’s it.

Typewriters have only monospaced characters; personal computers have mostly proportional ones. What’s the difference?

This is an example of a monospaced typeface (Courier New). Each character takes up the same amount of space. Thus, a period takes up as much space as a letter on a page. Space hog! Consequently, it was considered “best practice” to put two spaces after periods to clearly separate your sentences.

This is an example of a proportional typeface (Verdana). Each character only gets the space it needs. Thus, a period will take up less space than a letter on a page because its smaller than any letter of the alphabet. Consequently, it’s now considered “best practice” to treat periods like any other character and only add one space. This rule applies to other punctuation marks as well. No exceptions!

I know this is a hard habit to break. However, your publication will look more professional if you do. As the sheep on Animal Farm would say: “Double space baaad; single space goood!”

Tip: If you use Adobe InDesign CS4 to layout your pages, you can eliminate all of these double spaces in your document with a single click. Just click on the list arrow for the query box at the top of the Find/Replace dialogue box. (See ”Find“screen shot.) Make sure you are searching your entire document, not just one section.