I recently fell into the lie/lay/lied/laid trap.
The sentence in question was: 'I ditched my robe and ___ on the bed.'
My first instinct was to use 'lay'. But then I started second-guessing. So I googled and ended up reading paragraphs-long responses talking about how often these words trip people up and their definitions and states of verb-ness with rarely a clear-cut answer. Graphics like the one below were more helpful.
What I gathered was that 'lay' is the proper word, but — darn it all — I still wasn't entirely comfortable with it. Probably because by that point, all variants were sounding wrong due to semantic satiation. Yeah, that's a thing.
I thought, fuck this. Life's too short.
'I ditched my robe and got on the bed.'
It might not be ideal, but it works and I'm sticking with it.
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That's what editors are for. Just pick one and move on; in the editing process, your editor will probably point out the Chicago Manual of Style (or some other piece of fluff) says blah, blah, blah...so the correct choice is _____.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the advice, Anonymous. :)
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