As I’m sure you must have already encountered in your own newspaper or magazine readings, some similar-sounding or somewhat similarly spelled pairs of verbs often get annoyingly misused because it’s not so easy to figure out whether they are being used intransitively or transitively. Among these verb-pairs, easily the most troublesome are the intransitive verb “lie,” which means to stay at rest horizontally, and the transitive “lay,” which means to put or set something down.

The intransitive “lie” is most commonly misused when it’s forced to function as a transitive verb in sentences like this one: “The ousted manager went to his office and laid on the couch.” The correct usage here is, of course, the intransitive past tense “lay”: “The ousted manager went to his office and lay on the couch.” On the other hand, the intransitive, past tense “lay down” is often mistakenly used in sentences like this: “The rebels surrendered and lay down their arms.” This time, the correct usage is the transitive, past-tense “laid down”: “The rebels surrendered and laid down their arms.”  

Often, too, the intransitive present tense verb “lay” is misused in sentences like this one: “The geographers are checking precisely where the islands detected recently by satellite lay in the Pacific Ocean.” The correct usage here is the transitive, plural present tense “lie”: “The geographers are checking precisely where the islands detected recently by satellite lie in the Pacific Ocean.” 

Why are “lie” and “lay” such problematic verbs? To find out, let’s once again clearly distinguish between intransitive and transitive verbs.

A verb is intransitive when it doesn’t need a direct object to work properly in a sentence, as is the case with “yawned” in this sentence: “During his trial, the unrepentant criminal often yawned.” Here, “yawned” is clearly intransitive. It doesn’t need a direct object, and the sentence is complete without one.

On the other hand, a verb is transitive when it absolutely needs a direct object to receive its action, as is the case with “grip” in this sentence: “He gripped my arm.” Drop the direct object of such verbs and the sentence no longer makes sense: “He gripped.”

Now, the problem with “lie” and “lay” is that apart from the fact that they have somewhat overlapping meanings, they are also highly irregular verbs that inflect or change forms in such unpredictable, confusing ways.

The intransitive “lie,” in the sense of staying at rest horizontally, inflects as follows: “lies” for the singular present tense, as in “She chokes when she lies down”; “lie” for the plural present tense, as in “They choke when they lie down”; “lay” for the past tense, whether singular or plural, as in “She got tired and lay down”; and the past participle “lain” in the perfect tenses, as in “She has lain all day while her husband is away.” None of the usages of “lie” above has a direct object.

Now here’s how the transitive “lay,” in the sense of setting something down, inflects: “lays” for the singular present tense, as in “She meticulously lays breakfast for us”; “lay” for the plural present tense, as in “They meticulously lay breakfast for us”; “laid” for the past tense, as in “We laid our laptops on the table”; and the past participle “laid” for the perfect tenses, as in “They had laid their laptops aside by the time their manager arrived.” Here, every usage of “lie” has a direct object.

Take note that among these inflections, the past tense form of the intransitive “lie”—“lay”—is exactly the same as that of the present tense plural of the transitive “lay”—also “lay.” It is this quirk of the language that makes it difficult for us to see whether “lie” or “lay” is being used transitively or intransitively, so we must be very careful indeed when using these two highly irregular verbs. (September 15, 2007)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, September 15, 2007 © 2007 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

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Sometime ago, a foreign reader of my column in The Manila Times raised an eyebrow over my use of the comma before the conjunction “and” in this sentence: “The [author] unravels the various mechanisms and tools of English for combining words and ideas into clear, logical, and engaging writing.”

He commented: “There is a comma after the second to the last adjective, and I noted that you do this all the time. Has some authority changed convention?”

That comma that made him uncomfortable is, of course, the serial comma, which is also called the Oxford comma and the Harvard comma. It’s the comma placed by some writers like me—but avoided by most editors of Philippine newspapers and magazines—immediately before the conjunction “and,” “or,” or “nor” that precedes the final item in a list of three or more items. Admittedly, its use has remained debatable up to this day among writers and editors in various parts of the world.

Here’s how I justified my consistent use of the serial comma to that foreign reader:  

Yes, I use the serial comma all the time as a matter of stylistic choice. I just happen to have imbibed the serial-comma tradition from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, the Chicago Manual of Style, and H.W. Fowler’s Modern English Usage. However, during my early days as a campus journalist and later as a reporter for a daily newspaper, I would routinely knock off my serial commas because the newspaper I was working with had adopted the no-serial-comma preference of American print media, particularly The New York Times and the Associated Press. If I didn’t knock off those serial commas myself, my editors would do so anyway and sullenly admonish me not to foist my personal preference over the house rule.    

But no, the convention on whether or not to use the serial comma hasn’t changed at all. I’m aware that the no-serial-comma tradition remains a widespread stylistic practice of the mass media in the United Kingdom as well as in Canada, Australia, and South Africa. But personally, I just want to be consistent after making a personal choice based on my own experience with the problems of punctuation over the years.

Of course, the usefulness of the serial comma might not be readily apparent and appreciated when the items in a sentence with a serial list consist only of a single word or two, as in the following sentences:

“She bought some apples, oranges and pears.”

“For the role of Hamlet, the choices are Fred Santos, Tony Cruz, Jimmy Reyes and George Perez.” 

But see what happens when the listed items consist of long phrases with more than four or five words:

“The major businesses in the domestic pet services industry are traditional veterinary services, fancy pet grooming and makeover shops, a wide assortment of animal and bird food, freshwater and marine fish of various kinds and aquarium equipment and supplies for industrial and home use.”

Now, try to figure out where each enumerative item ends and begins in the phrase “freshwater and marine fish of various kinds and aquarium equipment and supplies for industrial and home use.”

In contrast, see how clear and unequivocal the last two items in the list become when we deploy a serial comma between “various kinds” and “aquarium equipment,” as follows:

“The major businesses in the domestic pet services industry are traditional veterinary services, fancy pet grooming and makeover shops, a wide assortment of animal and bird food, freshwater and marine fish of various kinds, and aquarium equipment and supplies for industrial and home use.”

I therefore think it’s best to use a serial comma by default in such situations regardless of how long the phrase for each item is in the enumerative sequence. This way, we can consistently avoid confusing readers and avoid violating their sense of rhythm and balance. (July 4, 2009)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, June 4, 2009 © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

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