Lie and lay, with their confusing past-tense forms, are my nominees for the most vexing words in the English language. But if you can just master the rule for present tense, you can win this battle. So here's the rule:
"Lay" takes an object. "Lie" does not.
Unfortunately, some of the best-known examples confuse the matter.
I lie down to sleep.
Now I lay me down to sleep.
I just said the same thing correctly both ways. The second one is correct because I use "me" as an object.
Maybe this will help: Lay down the law.
"The law" is the object in that sentence. That's pretty easy to remember.
But in case that isn't good enough, here's an example from the 1980s in which musicians - usually famous for popularizing bad grammar - actually get it right. ("It" is the object in the song title.)
Now, for past tense, which really makes things even more confusing:
The past tense of "lie" is "lay." Oh yeah, no problem there. Whose idea was this, anyway?
The past tense of "lay" is "laid."
Here's where it gets easy, because vulgar slang is coming to the rescue with a mnemonic device: Someone got laid last night. If you can remember that "someone" is the object in this sentence, you can remember that "laid" is the past tense of the the word that takes the object: "lay."
And those grammar nannies, what were they doing? I got it right the first time when it was present tense, but the second example was correct for past tense: The grammar nannies lay in wait, but they bounced because the college student finally got the difference between "lay" and "lie."
Now, if none of these mnemonic devices helps you memorize the rule, you have two choices: 1) Avoid using these words altogether, or 2) look it up every time, because you know you might get it wrong.
© Holly A. Heyser
