Lie vs. Lay

Here’s the difference between lie and lay: Lying is a thing you do. Laying is a thing you do to something.

• The carpet has to lie flat before it’ll fly you anywhere.
• You have to lay the carpet flat before it’ll fly you anywhere.

To put it another way, lay is transitive and lie is intransitive. Transitive verbs need a direct object. (See Transitive and Intransitive Birds for more on this.) In the example above, the object of lay is carpet.

Present Tense

One way to remember the difference between lie and lay is to think of the idioms “lie like a rug” and “lay an egg.” You can’t say “lay like a rug” because then the pun (lying on the floor/combusting one’s pants) doesn’t work. “Lay an egg,” on the other hand, demonstrates how the verb lay needs a direct object, in this case egg.

In the antiquated structure of “now I lay me down to sleep,” the object of lay is me. The modern version would read “now I lie down to sleep.” If you’re not laying down a thing (or a person), then what you’re doing is lying.

• My only goal is to lie around in a fluffy robe eating chocolates.
• Lay Whiskers on his cat bed and step away slowly.
• Anatoli has to have a lie-down after every séance.
• There is a special hell for people who lay open books face down.

So far so simple, right? Just wait.

Past Tense

Because the English language laughs at logic, the past tense of lie is lay.

• The carpet lay still and refused to fly anywhere.
• After waking, Gregor lay in bed trying to figure out what he’d turned into overnight.
• All that month we lay low at the ranch while the posse searched for us.

The past tense of lay is laid.

• When the act was over, the ventriloquist tenderly laid her dummy in its box.
• The night before the big match, the luchador laid out his favourite mask, cape, and tights.

Past Participle

A past participle is a verb form you use with have or had (e.g., drunk, given, seen). The past participle of lie is lain.

• For ten years Teodora had lain in her coffin, waiting for a victim.
• You’ve lain around feeling sorry for yourself long enough.

The past participle of lay is laid (yes, it’s the same as the simple past).

• Whiskers has generously laid a dead mouse on your pillow.
• It seemed the prince had not yet laid those salacious rumours to rest.

To recap:

• The Oompa-Loompas are lying in wait.
• Yesterday the Oompa-Loompas lay in wait.
• The Oompa-Loompas have lain in wait since breakfast.

• Lay your cards on the table.
• Yesterday you laid your cards on the table.
• You had already laid your cards on the table when I drew my derringer.

Lie Low or Lay Low?

The correct expression for keeping a low profile is “lie low”—although “lay low” is so commonly used instead, it’s probably only a matter of time before it becomes accepted. However, to lay low actually means to knock out or overcome. For example, you’ll often read of someone being “laid low” by illness. In such cases, the object of lay is the person being laid low.

• Lupe was laid low after Sunday’s roller derby match.
• Roller derby injuries can lay Lupe low.
• Hien and Renée had to lie low after the diamond heist.

In casual spoken English, lay and lie are frequently interchangeable, but formal writing guides still maintain the distinction, so it’s worth memorizing the different verb forms. That said, it’s rare to see lain in the wild, let alone hear it, and I doubt most readers will notice if you use laid by mistake.

Support this blog at patreon.com/grammarlandia. Patrons who pledge $5 or more a month will get access to exclusive bonus content. This month’s bonus post is about jibe, gibe, and jive, and includes references to both Hamlet and the Bee Gees.

Parallel Construction and Why It's Good for You

Parallel construction is when a series of elements—nouns, adjectives, verbs, phrases, elephants—all follow the same structure, copying each other’s moves like a row of synchronized swimmers. The effect is sometimes a subtle one, but such parallelism will make your writing flow more smoothly.

Life in the middle ages was nasty and brutish, and had alarming dental practices.

Take the following paraphrasing of Thomas Hobbes:

• Life in the middle ages was nasty, brutish, and short.

Part of its pithiness comes from its series of parallel adjectives: “nasty, brutish, and short.” If these three words didn’t match so neatly, the sentence would be much less punchy.

• Life in the middle ages was nasty, brutish, and had alarming dental practices.

In the original sentence, the verb was applied to all three elements: life was nasty, [was] brutish, and [was] short. But in our second version, the syntax falls apart on the third element.

• Life in the middle ages was nasty, [was] brutish, and [was] had alarming dental practices.

This sentence isn’t really a series of three elements; it’s two elements plus another phrase. Notice how its flow is improved when it’s treated as such.

• Life in the middle ages was nasty and brutish, and had alarming dental practices.

Whenever you begin a series—or what looks like a series—your reader instinctively expects parallel construction, even if they couldn’t define it on a game show. If your structure isn’t parallel, your sentences will feel clunky and unsatisfying.

Untangling Your Syntax

My son hunted the Jabberwock through tulgey woods, overgrown wabes, and slithy swamps.

Parallel construction applies to all kinds of series, whatever parts of speech they contain.

• Mr. Simmons set the bell, book, and candle on the countertop and began casting the spell.

Here the three elements bell, book, and candle are all sharing an implied the: the bell, [the] book, and [the] candle.

• X Mr. Simmons set the bell, book, and a candle on the countertop and began casting the spell.

Now our expectations of parallelism are befuddled. Our brains read an awkward “the bell, [the] book, and [the] a candle.” The sentence needs to be reconstructed.

• ✓ Mr. Simmons set the bell, the book, and a candle on the countertop and began casting the spell.

Prepositions, too, should apply evenly to the elements in your series. If that’s not possible, you need to repeat the preposition for each element.

• X My son hunted the Jabberwock through tulgey woods, overgrown wabes, and under tumtum trees.

Through works with the first two elements (“through … woods, [through] … wabes”), but not the third (“[through] under trees”). Either the third element needs to be changed to take the same preposition as the first two, or through needs to be repeated for the second element.

• ✓ My son hunted the Jabberwock through tulgey woods, overgrown wabes, and slithy swamps.
• ✓ My son hunted the Jabberwock through tulgey woods, through overgrown wabes, and under tumtum trees.

Here’s another example of disrupted syntax (which, by the way, would make a great band name).

• X Ndidi powered up the spaceship, fed the cat, put on her sunglasses, and a course was set for Alpha Centauri.

In this sentence we have a nicely repeating series of verb-object, verb-object, verb-object, until the last element flips to object-verb (“a course was set”). Or, to look at it another way, the subject, Ndidi, works with all the series’s elements in the same way, until the last one.

• X Ndidi powered up the spaceship, [Ndidi] fed the cat, [Ndidi] put on her sunglasses, and [Ndidi] a course was set for Alpha Centauri.

The fix, in this case, is simple.

• ✓ Ndidi powered up the spaceship, fed the cat, put on her sunglasses, and set a course for Alpha Centauri.

Sometimes an awkward series is just crying to be separated into two sentences.

• X I felt the waves closing around me, bubbles rush past my face, and saw a long, slimy tentacle wrap around my ankle.
• ✓ I felt the waves close around me and bubbles rush past my face. A long, slimy tentacle wrapped around my ankle.

Parallel Construction and Helping Verbs

Auxiliary, or helping, verbs are little verbs like was, have, and could that glom on to more muscular verbs to form verb phrases, such as were perusing, have murdered, can imagine, did hoodwink, might have been drinking, and so on. Such phrases often wreak havoc on parallelism.

• X The dragon would chew my pillows, eat my shoes, and torched my cuckoo clock.

The helping verb would pairs up chummily with chew and eat (“would chew…, [would] eat”) but doesn’t work with torched (“[would] torched”). We need to rethink our sentence’s structure.

• ✓ The dragon would chew my pillows, eat my shoes, and torch my cuckoo clock.
• ✓ The dragon would chew my pillows and eat my shoes, and it torched my cuckoo clock.

The dragon would chew my pillows, eat my shoes, and torch my cuckoo clock.

• X Dr. Amani has practiced medicine in Osaka, Cairo, and danced at the Bolshoi.
• ✓ Dr. Amani has practiced medicine in Osaka and Cairo and has danced at the Bolshoi.

Parallel Lists

Lists and subheadings should also be constructed in parallel.

Tasks for World Domination

• to test death ray
• digging underground lair in backyard
• practice maniacal laugh
• robot monster

This list contains an infinitive, a participial phrase, a verb, and a noun—and they’re all fighting with each other. Pick a format and apply it across the board.

Tasks for World Domination

• test death ray
• dig underground lair in backyard
• practice maniacal laugh
• build robot monster

Tasks for World Domination

• testing death ray
• digging underground lair in backyard
• practicing maniacal laugh
• building robot monster

Tasks for World Domination

• death ray
• underground lair in backyard
• maniacal laugh
• robot monster

Tasks for World Domination

• to test death ray
• to dig underground lair in backyard
• to practice maniacal laugh
• to build robot monster

Of course, as a writer you may choose to forego parallel construction. Sometimes disrupting the reader’s expectations can be an effective source of surprise or humour. But, as always, knowing the rules and judiciously choosing when to bend them makes all the difference between clever wordplay and sloppy writing.

Commas, Names, and Chopsticks

Should you put commas around a person’s name? Trick question! It depends on the sentence.

My sister Irina is the one with the absinthe habit.

In some cases, names should be held between a pair of commas like a piece of sushi between chopsticks; in others, commas are as superfluous and undesirable as a chaperone at an orgy. The difference is whether or not the name is needed to understand the sentence.

• The poet Yeats did not take rejection well.
• The next poet on the syllabus, Yeats, did not take rejection well.

In the first example, removing the name would change the sentence. “What poet?” we’d wonder. “Who are they talking about?” In the second example, taking out Yeats doesn’t change the meaning. We still know who’s being talked about—the next poet on the syllabus.

Commas go around a name when it can be picked up and removed from the sentence without changing its meaning.

• My sister Irina is the one with the limp and the absinthe habit.
• My sister, Irina, is the one with the limp and the absinthe habit.

Which sentence is correct? Both are, but they’re describing different situations. In the first, the speaker has more than one sister. Take out the name, and you won’t know which of her many booze-addled sisters she’s talking about. The name is essential, so it has no commas.

In the second sentence, the speaker has only one sister. Take out Irina and the sentence tells you the same thing it did before. The name is nonessential, so it’s set off with commas. The framing commas signal an interruption, a psst! What they contain is side business—informative, maybe, but not an integral part of the sentence.

• My werewolf, Duane, lives in the basement rec room.

This is fine if you only have one werewolf; his name can be removed from the sentence without changing its meaning. But what if you have a whole pack of werewolves stashed in your house? You need the word Duane so your reader won’t think you’re talking about your other werewolves, Geraldine, Wallace, and Leticia.

• My werewolf Duane lives in the basement rec room with the rest of his pack.

Disclaimer: Though this used to be a hard-and-fast rule, in The Chicago Manual of Style’s compilation of Q&As, But Can I Start a Sentence with “But”? (2016), the authors say these sorts of commas are now optional where the meaning is obvious. So, for example, you may write “my husband Hieronymus is a painter” without fear that your readers will assume you have more than one husband.

Job Titles and Commas

Unnecessary commas like to creep in when a name follows a job title or description, but you can weed out the extras using the same principle as above.

• Loyalist Spies and Their Lizards was written by renowned historian and amateur herpetologist Elena Gutierrez.

Without the name we are left scratching our heads and wondering “Who? Which historian/reptile enthusiast can they mean?” Her name is essential, therefore comma-less.

• Loyalist Spies and Their Lizards was written by Belleville’s own renowned historian and amateur herpetologist, Elena Gutierrez.

Belleville can boast only one historian and herpetologist, so even without her name we’d still know who’s being referred to. Since the name can be plucked out without changing the sentence, it is set apart with a comma.

• Chartered accountant Neville Wimsey dreamed of being a lion tamer.
• Our company’s chartered accountant, Neville Wimsey, dreamed of being a lion tamer.

Direct Address Loves Commas

Another situation in which names need commas is when you are speaking to someone directly.

• Fatima, I don’t think you understand what this eggplant means to me.
• Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a go-go dancer!

Grab a flamingo, everyone!

Such names are always set off with commas—even when they’re not actually names:

• Death, where is thy sting?
• Grab a flamingo, everyone, and start playing!

In fact, the chopsticks-and-sushi rule can apply to all kinds of words and phrases. This is where grammar nerds like to throw around the terms restrictive clause and nonrestrictive clause, meaning words that are essential to the sentence and words that are not. But I’ll save more on that for a later post. In the meantime, reader, pick up your commas and dig in!