For 30 years, Andy Ross owned Cody's Books in Berkeley, California. After the famous bookstore closed, he became a literary agent in Oakland. Recently he posted an interview with Mary Norris on his blog Ask the Agent. Norris copy edits at and occasionally writes for the New Yorker. In this interview, Norris succinctly explains the grammatical rules to "lie" and "lay" in a way that can only be described as stunning:
Mary: When I first got into the copy-editing game, I wondered why writers persisted in the error of their ways when they must have seen the changes that the editors made. Finally I figured out that it isn’t the writers’ job to style their own copy. For writers, having to think about those things is constricting. Plus, if they did, it would put us out of a job. . . . The difference between “lie” and “lay” in the past tense continues to confound. It is “lie, lay, lain” (intransitive verb, meaning “to recline”) and “lay, laid, laid” (transitive verb, meaning “to set [something] down”). “Laid” is so often used incorrectly as the past tense of “lie” (as in “She laid down for a nap” [ding, ding, ding: wrong!]) that people are afraid to use it even when it’s right, so you’ll get a sentence like “She lay the stones on the grave.” It doesn’t set off so many bells, but it’s a mistake, in this case attributable to overcorrectness.
1 comment:
If you haven't already read them, you might enjoy the series of letters between Barzun and Lloyd on the meaning of "uninterested" vs "disinterested." The letters were published in one of the MLA in the 1930s (don't quote me on the year - I last read them in 50s!).
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