Where issue lies?

Ah, the English language. It’s so full of extraneous words and rules, so fantastically complicated and confusing. One of the many common misunderstandings within the language stems from the confusion between lay and lie.

Lay is a verb that commonly means “to put or set (something) down.” Lie is a verb that commonly means “to be in or to assume a horizontal position” (or “to make an untrue statement,” but we’ll focus on the first definition). In other words, lay takes a direct object, and lie does not. As for the misconceptions, well, when you look at the two verbs next to each other in different tenses, it becomes a bit more obvious where the confusion is.

Present Tense:

Lay: Unfold the blanket and lay it on the floor.

Lie: This stuff is pretty groundbreaking; you’d better lie down.

The difference in the present tense seems pretty straightforward: lay refers to a direct object, and lie does not.

Past Tense:

Lay: She laid the blanket on the floor when I asked.

Lie: I felt sick, so I lay down.

Here’s where it can get a bit tricky. The past tense of lie is lay, but not because there is any overlap between the two verbs. So when you say, “I lay down for a nap,” you’re actually using the verb lie, not lay, despite the way it sounds.

Past Participle:

Lay: She had laid the blanket down before she left.

Lie: I had lain there for some time before getting up.

The past participle form is a common point of error. Many people accidentally use lied instead of lain when using the verb lie. Lied, however, refers to the past tense and past participle form of lie when it means “to make an untrue statement.”

Present participle:

Lay: I was laying the blanket on the floor.

Lie: You’ve been lying down all day.

You lie down, but you lay something down. Lie does not require a direct object. Lay requires a direct object. The same rules apply to laying and lying (never “lieing”—beware of spelling). The past tense of lay is laid, but be careful with the past tense of lie—there are two options. We’ll dive into them later.

To lay is to set (or otherwise place) something in a resting position. Here are a few examples of lay in a sentence:

A lie is an untruth. However, it’s the verb form of lie that people find difficult to distinguish from lay. The verb lie can mean to tell a falsehood. Here’s an example of that version of lie in a sentence:

If to tell an untruth were the only meaning of lie, using these two words properly would be less of a challenge. However, lie can also mean to recline or to rest in a flat position. Look at this example:

(pLAce) and (recLIne)

This mnemonic should help you remember that lay, which begins with the letters L-A, has a long a sound like the one in its definition: to place. On the other hand, lie, which starts with the letters L-I, has a long sound like the one in its definition: to recline.

Knowing the definitions of lay and lie helps, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you exactly how to use them in a sentence. Remember, lay needs a direct object, while lie never has a direct object. Here are two of the examples again to show these properties of lay and lie.

In this example, my purse is the direct object of the transitive verb lay.

In this sentence, the intransitive verb lie stands alone; it has no direct object.

There’s still one more thing you need to know: So far, we’ve been using the verbs lay and lie in their infinitive/present tense forms. But when you are talking about reclining, the past tense of lie is lay, which definitely contributes to the confusion! Here’s an example:

Beware of spelling! The present participle of lie is not lieing. The i becomes a y: lying. Here is a mnemonic to help you tell laying and lying apart: “If you tell an untruth, it is a lie, not a lay; and if you are in the process of telling an untruth you are lying, not laying.”

The past tense of lie (as in to tell an untruth) is lied. As we mentioned above, the past tense of lie (as in to recline) is lay. The past tense of lay is laid, which is another recipe for confusion! To remember that laid (as opposed to lain, the past participle of lie) is the past tense of lay, just remember: Use a d when there is a direct object. Because you need a direct object only with lay, you will know that the past tense is laid.

In this example, book is the direct object of laid, the past tense form of the transitive verb lay.

The tool is the Logic Tree. Starting from an issue, it lets us break a problem down into its elements to understand which needs to be solved more urgently. As with all the tools, there isn’t a single way to use it. My way of using it lets me decompose the problem in macro-areas answering to the classic “W” questions: when (does it occur), where (am I when the problem arises), who (is with me at that moment), what (am I doing). All this, to get to the why (it happens).

Iterating on these questions helps me divide the issues into mutually exclusive components that are easier to evaluate. Of course, you could follow a different question path if it works better for your problem.

Let’s try with an example. One of my main flaws is that sometimes I lose my temper. I really want to solve this problem, so I’ll try and use the Logic Tree to analyze it and to better understand the root cause.

I start by isolating the places where I spend most of my time. These are the gym, my home, and the office. Then, I ask myself with whom I spend my time: at the gym, I’m mostly working out alone; at home, I spend some time alone but I am mostly with my wife. Finally, at work, I mainly spend my time with my colleagues and my leads… But it happens that I stay on my own, coding. This is the tree I have built until now:

What do I do when I’m with these people? That’s the following question. Well, the gym’s branch has no leaf at this point. Also, thinking about that case, it never happened that I lost my temper there. So I can safely prune that branch.

Let’s go deeper into the other two main branches. Which activities do I do the most at home? Well, I clean and cook, I play videogames, read books and see movies and series. I often talk with my wife about our future and our ideas. And it seldom happens that we argue.

At work, instead, I tackle different tasks. When I’m alone I mainly design, implement and debug features for our apps and libraries. When I work directly with my colleagues, we mostly discuss new proposals or try to understand why there are some issues here and there. Finally, when it comes to interacting with my leads, we mainly plan the activities for future days/weeks.

At this point, the tree is kind of big and looks something like this:

Now it’s time to prune some nodes. Going through the nodes, I asked myself “how often do I lose my temper when I do this activity?”. I colored the balloons with different shades of red. The result is that the activities where I mostly lack calm are when I argue with my wife, when I debug a piece of code and when I discuss issues with my colleagues. Other risky activities are when I play and when I discuss proposals.