Back in the usage saddle
Feb. 9th, 2004 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynWhen I began these posts, the most-asked question I received was on the lay/lie issue. Frankly, I’ve always been a bit baffled by the level of outrage generated by misuse of these verbs and tenses (I mean, I have trouble with them myself!), but it seems to be one of those benchmarks of what people consider acceptable language skills. I thought I’d add another one that seems to cause extreme confusion in the lay/lie manner, and one where I often find myself far more frustrated by misuse or misunderstanding -- wake/awake as a verb. I’ve seen some truly convoluted approaches (awokened is my favorite) to getting this one down, and the two problems seem fairly similar to my eye.
Lay and lie are easy to confuse because they sound similar, perform a similar function in a sentence, and also are usually misheard and misused in their various tenses -- so it becomes hard for most people to really understand the difference when the past tense of lie is lay, but you use lay as the present tense verb for putting or placing something. For most of us who don’t pick up all this grammar crap in school very easily, the distinctions will be lost, and then it’s reinforced as we get older because almost nowhere is it used correctly in general colloquial English. We have no real confirmation of how it should be used; in fact, we only get confirmation of its inappropriate use. So it’s no wonder that everyone’s messed up about it.
Lie means this: to recline or rest on a surface. Lay means: to put or place something. The delightful Heather Gladney sent me a wonderful answer written by Barbara back in the heyday of Professionals fandom, and I hope she won’t mind if I quote a bit from it, because it’s pretty useful:
“This is a problem in all the genres of fanfic I've ever read, some of it otherwise impeccably edited, proofread, and composed; it's just more noticeable in slash fiction, perhaps, because the action so often centers on someone lying on a bed (floor, hearth rug, kitchen table, meadow), or alternatively, laying his clothes (car keys, beer glass, partner) on a bed (chair, desk, airing cupboard).
Rule of thumb on lie/lay is: that one lies down (lay down yesterday, has lain down in the past) of one's own accord; and one lays something else down, or yesterday laid it down, or in the past has laid it down.”
This is basically all there is to it. Seriously. What turns it into a problem is that issue I mentioned before -- when you want to write the past tense of the verb to lie (meaning, I’m going to go lie down because I have the vapors after seeing those latest pictures of Sean Bean in Troy), you end up with the present tense of the other word (I’m going to lay these pictures down on the table before my drool ruins them). And then there’s all those tense versions -- lain, lying, and laid, laying. Arg! But if you think about phrases like “get laid” it makes some sense.
Here’s something Barbara also said:
“Less formally, Doyle lays (laid yesterday, often has laid) Bodie on whatever surface is handy. One or both of them probably lie (yesterday lay, have lain in the past) horizontally during the laying. I'm getting dizzy.”
What I want to recommend to people, if they’re having trouble with these forms and the concepts, is to write around a difficult situation (or if you’re betaing, to suggest this to your author). This is the editor’s biggest trick in a big bag of tricks -- recasting a sentence if at all possible. If you just can’t tell whether you want to write “Mulder lay the gun on the table” or “Mulder laid the gun on the table” (this is actually the correct one), then use a different verb -- “Mulder [put] [set] [slammed] [slid] [or whatever] the gun on the table.” Recasting is your friend when you have trouble. Otherwise, for most stuff, just remember these basics:
“Daniel was so exhausted that he lay down for a nap right there on the stargate.” (past-tense form of lie [to recline])
“Hermione laid the wand in my open hand.” (past-tense form of lay [to place])
“Buffy found Mr. Gordo lying in the corner of the closet.” (present participle form of lie [to rest on a surface])
There are more complex forms (had lain together through the night), but these should be your building blocks, and don't get too fancy if you're not comfy.
The variations on wake and awake seem to cause almost as much confusion, but result in less teeth-gnashing. Maybe it’s just that almost no one knows what to do with the damn things. Fowler even says in his Modern English Usage that “From earliest times, they have been unstable and unpredictable” and also calls the words’ history a philological nightmare. No kidding. I think one of the biggest problems for amateur writers about these verb forms is that we want to get poetical, so we start using them in tortuous (and torturous) sentences to make something sound more elegant than it may need to.
Awake, awaken, and waken all have what Fowler termed a tinge of formality that the simple, basic wake doesn’t have. So you can see the allure of using them in fanfic, because we want to sound all writerly and stuff. The most common forms are awake, awoke, awoken; awaken, awakened; wake, waken, wakened; and woken. Notice there is no awokened in there. ;-) The trick about knowing which one out of all these to use in your sentence means you have to know your tenses, and you have to know some basic grammar. So if you’re not good with either of those things, be extra special careful (or just e-mail me and ask!), or again, recast your sentence.
Here’s how you most commonly use these four verbs (wake, awake, awaken, and waken; I’ve thrown in up because sometimes people use it with wake and other times they don’t). I’m basing these sentences off those in Fowler, and the second set (awoken) can be stiltedly formal):
What time does Spike normally wake (up) at night?; Xander shouted, “Wake up!”; Buffy woke (up) to Angel knocking at her window; Giles woke with the dawn; Cordelia was woken (up) by the sound of hammering; The party woke Joyce (up) from a sound sleep.
Doyle awoke from a blackout; Angel awoke to the sound of rats scurrying past him; Buffy awoke her sleeping sister; The vampire bite awoke old fears in Anya.
Smallville must be awakened to the fact that there are aliens in town!; Seeing Clark without his shirt awakened Lex’s prurient interest; Lana’s shriek is enough to awaken the dead.
The Kents were wakened by fire in the barn; When Clark slept, nothing would waken him.
If you’re writing or betaing something, and what you see doesn’t fall into those structure categories, you probably have something on your hands that’s unusually formal, a little stilted, and possibly incorrect. So try to stick with what you know, or what sounds right -- most of us have a hell of a time trying to sound this out, and if it all sounds wrong to you no matter which form you choose, then write around it. Instead of struggling with “When he was alive, Stone had [awakened? awoken? waked?] to birdsong; now, in hell, he [awoke? waked? wakened?] to screams and the sound of Satan’s laughter” it might be a good idea to rewrite enough so that you’re comfortable with it (When he was alive, Stone would wake to the songs of birds outside his window; now, in hell, it was to screams and...”). Or something like that. Now I have to go lie down and watch soaps; you can wake me up later for chat.
Lay and lie are easy to confuse because they sound similar, perform a similar function in a sentence, and also are usually misheard and misused in their various tenses -- so it becomes hard for most people to really understand the difference when the past tense of lie is lay, but you use lay as the present tense verb for putting or placing something. For most of us who don’t pick up all this grammar crap in school very easily, the distinctions will be lost, and then it’s reinforced as we get older because almost nowhere is it used correctly in general colloquial English. We have no real confirmation of how it should be used; in fact, we only get confirmation of its inappropriate use. So it’s no wonder that everyone’s messed up about it.
Lie means this: to recline or rest on a surface. Lay means: to put or place something. The delightful Heather Gladney sent me a wonderful answer written by Barbara back in the heyday of Professionals fandom, and I hope she won’t mind if I quote a bit from it, because it’s pretty useful:
“This is a problem in all the genres of fanfic I've ever read, some of it otherwise impeccably edited, proofread, and composed; it's just more noticeable in slash fiction, perhaps, because the action so often centers on someone lying on a bed (floor, hearth rug, kitchen table, meadow), or alternatively, laying his clothes (car keys, beer glass, partner) on a bed (chair, desk, airing cupboard).
Rule of thumb on lie/lay is: that one lies down (lay down yesterday, has lain down in the past) of one's own accord; and one lays something else down, or yesterday laid it down, or in the past has laid it down.”
This is basically all there is to it. Seriously. What turns it into a problem is that issue I mentioned before -- when you want to write the past tense of the verb to lie (meaning, I’m going to go lie down because I have the vapors after seeing those latest pictures of Sean Bean in Troy), you end up with the present tense of the other word (I’m going to lay these pictures down on the table before my drool ruins them). And then there’s all those tense versions -- lain, lying, and laid, laying. Arg! But if you think about phrases like “get laid” it makes some sense.
Here’s something Barbara also said:
“Less formally, Doyle lays (laid yesterday, often has laid) Bodie on whatever surface is handy. One or both of them probably lie (yesterday lay, have lain in the past) horizontally during the laying. I'm getting dizzy.”
What I want to recommend to people, if they’re having trouble with these forms and the concepts, is to write around a difficult situation (or if you’re betaing, to suggest this to your author). This is the editor’s biggest trick in a big bag of tricks -- recasting a sentence if at all possible. If you just can’t tell whether you want to write “Mulder lay the gun on the table” or “Mulder laid the gun on the table” (this is actually the correct one), then use a different verb -- “Mulder [put] [set] [slammed] [slid] [or whatever] the gun on the table.” Recasting is your friend when you have trouble. Otherwise, for most stuff, just remember these basics:
“Daniel was so exhausted that he lay down for a nap right there on the stargate.” (past-tense form of lie [to recline])
“Hermione laid the wand in my open hand.” (past-tense form of lay [to place])
“Buffy found Mr. Gordo lying in the corner of the closet.” (present participle form of lie [to rest on a surface])
There are more complex forms (had lain together through the night), but these should be your building blocks, and don't get too fancy if you're not comfy.
The variations on wake and awake seem to cause almost as much confusion, but result in less teeth-gnashing. Maybe it’s just that almost no one knows what to do with the damn things. Fowler even says in his Modern English Usage that “From earliest times, they have been unstable and unpredictable” and also calls the words’ history a philological nightmare. No kidding. I think one of the biggest problems for amateur writers about these verb forms is that we want to get poetical, so we start using them in tortuous (and torturous) sentences to make something sound more elegant than it may need to.
Awake, awaken, and waken all have what Fowler termed a tinge of formality that the simple, basic wake doesn’t have. So you can see the allure of using them in fanfic, because we want to sound all writerly and stuff. The most common forms are awake, awoke, awoken; awaken, awakened; wake, waken, wakened; and woken. Notice there is no awokened in there. ;-) The trick about knowing which one out of all these to use in your sentence means you have to know your tenses, and you have to know some basic grammar. So if you’re not good with either of those things, be extra special careful (or just e-mail me and ask!), or again, recast your sentence.
Here’s how you most commonly use these four verbs (wake, awake, awaken, and waken; I’ve thrown in up because sometimes people use it with wake and other times they don’t). I’m basing these sentences off those in Fowler, and the second set (awoken) can be stiltedly formal):
What time does Spike normally wake (up) at night?; Xander shouted, “Wake up!”; Buffy woke (up) to Angel knocking at her window; Giles woke with the dawn; Cordelia was woken (up) by the sound of hammering; The party woke Joyce (up) from a sound sleep.
Doyle awoke from a blackout; Angel awoke to the sound of rats scurrying past him; Buffy awoke her sleeping sister; The vampire bite awoke old fears in Anya.
Smallville must be awakened to the fact that there are aliens in town!; Seeing Clark without his shirt awakened Lex’s prurient interest; Lana’s shriek is enough to awaken the dead.
The Kents were wakened by fire in the barn; When Clark slept, nothing would waken him.
If you’re writing or betaing something, and what you see doesn’t fall into those structure categories, you probably have something on your hands that’s unusually formal, a little stilted, and possibly incorrect. So try to stick with what you know, or what sounds right -- most of us have a hell of a time trying to sound this out, and if it all sounds wrong to you no matter which form you choose, then write around it. Instead of struggling with “When he was alive, Stone had [awakened? awoken? waked?] to birdsong; now, in hell, he [awoke? waked? wakened?] to screams and the sound of Satan’s laughter” it might be a good idea to rewrite enough so that you’re comfortable with it (When he was alive, Stone would wake to the songs of birds outside his window; now, in hell, it was to screams and...”). Or something like that. Now I have to go lie down and watch soaps; you can wake me up later for chat.
