What’s the Past Tense of Lie Down?

English has a little problem with lie, as in “lie down.”

• For one thing, we have the verb “lie” as in not telling the truth. The past tense of that word is “lied” as in “he lied to me yesterday.”
• For another thing, lie as in “lie down” is irregular. Its past tense form is not “lied”! It’s “lay”! As in—well, see the bad example below.
• And for a third thing, we have another verb, lay, which is transitive and requires an object. As in “lay the book on the table.” Past tense of lay is “laid” as in “he laid the book on the table yesterday.”

So now I’m forced to embarrass a fellow professional writer. He got it wrong:

But it’s worth considering that while the base issue was a good-ol’ chip design error, the true problem lied in Intel’s handling of the saga. In short, Intel’s best users were feeling disrespected.

https://tedium.co/2020/09/04/intel-floating-point-glitch-history/

Sigh. I think Ernie needed a proofreader. Or he should have paid more attention in sixth-grade English.

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Brooke McEldowney is one of my favorite cartoonists, partly because he does his grammar well. I’m certain this is intentional:

I’ve written about separable verbs (e.g. to gross out, to put up with) before. In the upper right corner you can do a search on “separable” to find my other posts on the subject. He’s following the bogus rule not to end a sentence with a preposition. (See those previous posts.)

And the “whom” is correct. “Whom” is the direct object, even though it serves as an interrogative.

The rule used to be that, for the future tense, you used “will” in the first person and “shall” for second and third person. I will jump, you shall jump, etc.

This rule went away and now we use “will” for everyone. I think it happened about the time I was in sixth grade. I remember “shall” being taught then, but heard only “will” when I got to high school.

For what it’s worth, I remember Gen. MacArthur’s “I shall return” after retreating from Corregidor in World War II being discussed as technically incorrect, and that his intent was to express emphasis.”

So here:

So is she right or wrong? Maybe okay if she wants emphasis.

Somewhat off topic: The Army style guide says to use “shall” as an imperative. Something like “You shall open the valve slowly.”

This guy gets it wrong. (You’ll find the rule after the comic.)

• When you have two choices, use the comparative, in this case, the word “better.”
• When you have more than two choices, use the superlative, which is what he does.
• When you have no choice, use the positive, in this case “good.”

Make that a habit.

When “however” is an adverb, it’s a plain old adverb:

However you do it, do your work with good tools.

But “however” is frequently used as an aside, a pause in the flow of thought. When you use “however” this way, always follow it with a comma.

However, using good tools does not guarantee good work.

What do you do when “however” is inside a sentence? Preceed the word with a semicolon, not another comma! This sentence is wrong:

No modern clinical researcher has returned to Kast’s ideas, however, anecdotal cases have begun to emerge highlighting some people self-medicating with LSD microdoses to treat chronic pain.

https://newatlas.com/science/trial-lsd-microdoses-acute-pain-study-results

We have a judgement call here because what’s before and what’s after the “however” are different enough that the second part of the sentence could stand alone as its own sentence. The passage should be either of these:

• No modern clinical researcher has returned to Kast’s ideas; however, anecdotal cases have begun to emerge highlighting some people self-medicating with LSD microdoses to treat chronic pain.
• No modern clinical researcher has returned to Kast’s ideas. However, anecdotal cases have begun to emerge highlighting some people self-medicating with LSD microdoses to treat chronic pain.

But don’t put a comma ahead of “however”!

Um, a picture. Here’s what came with the article. Can you interpret it? I think it presumes more knowledge of LSD than I have: