One of the persisting confusions for writers is the difference between the verbs lie and lay. If it’s been a long day, do I lie down or lay down to rest for a few minutes? There is nothing intrinsically difficult about using these two words if—and it’s an unfashionable condition, I know—we apply a little …
Category Archives: Thoughts About Writing
Shape-Shifters
Order something online, and soon thereafter you receive an email like this: Your order has shipped. You understand the sentence, but what does the grammar mean? Taking a look at this construction will give us a chance to review some of the basics and add—guardedly—a new design to our repertoire. We know that sentences are …
Showing Results
A reader this past week asked me about the choice I made in punctuating a sentence in a recent post. It’s an astute question, and will help us understand better the difference between a comma and a semicolon. My post last week entitled Ing contrasted the present participle and the gerund, both of which end …
Ing
So what is the difference between a moving van and a moving van? The more impatient among us will say, “Well, exactly nothing, because you’ve only said the same thing twice,” while the more grammatical might suspect a clue in the suffix –ing. I’d go with the grammarians. This seemingly idle question illustrates in fact …
Setting an Idea Aside
Let’s return to the topic of sentence design and look at an interesting grammatical arrangement called an absolute construction. Here’s a simple sentence that carries with it, somehow, a more descriptive or even meditative mood: I gardened late into the evening, the sun falling slowly behind the trees. The sentence begins with an independent clause …