Lie, Lay, They're, There, Their, etc.

I recall with clarity Bob Dylan's song "Lay, Lady, Lay" because there it is, one of the most common grammatical errors I hear people saying. Unless Bob picked her up and put her on the bed, "lay" isn't the correct verb. If he's encouraging her to come to bed with him, it should be "Lie, Lady, Lie." Maybe he didn't want to use "lie" since it sounds as if he's encouraging her to tell lies, but nonetheless, that's what it should have been. Just as it should be when you want your dog to lie down. You don't say "lay down." In order to "lay" anything, you must pick it up an put it down somewhere. It's a transitive verb for that reason.

I'm going to lay this magazine on the table while I lie down to take a nap. "Lie" is intransitive.

They're coming to dinner, meaning they are coming to dinner. It's a contraction.

There are six people lying on the floor. Pronoun. (Look at it this way: Anytime there is any tense of the verb to be, both subject and predicate must equal each other. You never have an object when you use this verb; you always have a predicate. If you picture the verb as an equals sign [=], you'll get a good insight about how it works.)

Their coats are slung in a pile in the corner. Meaning the coats belong to them; it's possessive.

There's a joke about a woman who visits her friend, who happens to have one of those German shepherds that likes to smell people's crotches. "Lay down," she keeps telling the nosy dog, with no results.

Her friend comes in the room to get her coat so they can leave, and the woman says, "I've been telling your dog to lay down and he just keeps pestering me. Doesn't he understand any commands?"

"Yes, but you'll find he responds much better to 'Lie down,' than to 'Lay down.'" Needless to say, she had the pleasure of being able to stick her nose a little bit up in the air, knowing that her dog knew better English than her friend.

Other Mix-ups

Here's another common one: its, possessive; it's, contraction for it is. Since most possessives are formed by adding 's to the word, this exception to the rule causes endless confusion. "It's my coat but it used to be my sister's. When she wore it, its lining dragged underneath the fabric of the coat, and she was too lazy to fix it or have someone else fix it."

Then and than. I said, "My dog is smarter than yours," then the other dog bit my leg. One is a comparison, the other is a preposition. I think a lot of the time the mix-up is caused by a typing error, but not noticed because the spelling and sounds of the two words are so similar. Many words in English have the same sounds but quite different meanings. Sometimes they are spelled very similarly; other times their spelling differs quite a lot but they are pronounced alike. Or in some cases, mispronounced alike.

If any reader knows of more examples, please feel free to contribute to the list.