LIES, LIES, ALL LIES -- OR IS IT LAYS?

Preliminary Draft Cover

I'm in the middle of doing my final proof of Missing Emily: Croatian Life Letters and had the hardest time with the words lie, lay, and all of their counterparts. To address this problem, I avoided using the word wherever possible such as in "curled on the floor" or "she was perpendicular on the bed." But sometimes, I just couldn't avoid it. So I got out my handy A Pocket Style Manual, 5th Ed., by Diana Hacker.

Every time I came across some derivative of lie or lay, I had to think critically about what I was trying to say. Was I trying to say to "recline or rest on a surface" as defined by Hacker in A Pocket Style Manual in which case a form of lie was appropriate (p.26)? Or was I trying to put something or someone in a place in which case lay would be correct?

And it gets even more confusing. After I figured out which of lie or lay was appropriate, I had to figure out which word was correct for the tense I was using. If the correct word was a form of lie, then the correct past tense word was lay (yes, the same as the root word for place/put something) and the present participle was lying as in "is lying down" which is the same as if someone is being untruthful. The past participle of lie is lain which I avoided totally. For lay, past tense and past participle is laid while the present participle is laying as in "she is laying the book in the trash."

Even after all of the studying I did comparing my lays or lies to the guidelines in A Pocket Style Manual, all of these lies, lays, laids, lains, lyings, and layings are swimming around in my head. So it doesn't look like I'll be able to turn my page away from this section any time soon. I just hope I made the right choices in my proof.

by The Wordsy Woman

Source: Hacker, Diane (2009). A Pocket Style Manual (5th ed.). Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.