Transitive Verbs

I know I've written about it before. I know I always promise that I'm not going to spend my entire life griping about petty grammar mistakes. I know I'm not perfect. I know I'm not a trained editorial professional. And I know it makes me sound like a cantankerous old coot, consarn it!

But I am sick and damn tired of people not knowing the difference between "lie" and "lay." Or rather, they may know the difference, but they don't know how to conjugate either of those verbs. I have similar problems with "sit" and "set," but less frequently.

Let's make this crystal clear: lie is an intransitive verb. If you are trying to lie something down, you are doing it wrong. Lie takes no object. That's what intransitive means. Lay, on the other hand, is transitive. If you are trying to lay down, then you need help. Lay takes an object. That's what transitive means.

So why can't people get it? And not just in conversation, or in text messages, or in similarly ill-grammared locales. I've seen this mistake frequently in books and scholarly magazines. I see it all the time.

"I lie down, I lay down, I have lain down." "I lay something on the ground, I laid something on the ground. I have laid something on the ground." Wow, I can conjugate the verbs. Why can't other people?

This is not a picayune little problem. This is not an evolution of the language. It is using the wrong word. It's like if I were to say, "I shot hands with the President," because that word looks sort of similar to "shook" and I was confused. Screw your confusion. You are professional writers; write better! And if we can't rely on you, your editors are supposed to catch errors like that, boneheaded stupid wrong errors.

As always, feel free to point out that my grammar is not perfect. I won't pay any attention, because this isn't about grammar. It's about knowing the damn language!