A reporter announcing the latest news from the Philippines said, voice over the ruins of a street, "The ruined buildings lay in the street and prevent the passage of traffic." He thought he was using the present tense. Not. Lay is the past tense of lie. Doesn't anyone know that any more? LIe, lay, laid. If you use lay in the present tense it has to take an object because it's a transitive verb. People have gotten confused, that is, those who were taught to pray when little, "Now I lay me down to sleep." Me is the object of lay. If he or she wasn't taught to pray he/she could have said, "Now I lie down to sleep," because it's not a tetrameter line.

Hey, my blog is not supposed to be a grammar lesson. But it is a safe outlet for a pet peeve. No one is going to pay any attention to it or me. I have noticed that when I correct people verbally, out loud, to their face, they tend to get annoyed and defensive. When someone corrects me, I thank them. Mind you, I usually go home and check, to make sure they're right. I can tell you things I've learned from corrections, for example, the correct pronunciation of disparate, amenable, rationale and caffeine. I will not use the latter two words because I don't like their correct pronunciation. Another century ago I dropped a boy I was dating because he corrected me inaccurately. I had said something was stultifying and he told me no, the word was stullifying. There's no talking to someone like that. (SpelChek knew better than he; it just tried to correct him.) Fast forward a lot of years and you see me withdrawing a piece I had written for a magazine when an editor (they had editors in those days) put incorrect words in my copy. I sound didactic now so I'll lie low.