It's me, Rosemary, back again with another grammar peeve. Every day (note: 2 words) I see instances of word misuse. Bloodied phrases and abused words, broken and sprawled at the scene of the crime… which more often than not can be found in magazines, on the Internet, on advertisements and notices, and in SELF-PUBLISHED BOOKS BY NEW AUTHORS.

Have you committed any of these heinous acts? Watch out, the Grammar Police are coming for you!

Here are a few of the most shocking types of word crimes: the ones that involve homophones [homo = same; phone = sound]:

It's not PEAKED my interest or PEEKED my interest, it’s PIQUED my interest.

I didn’t PEAK around the door, I PEEKED around the door.

It’s not POURED over the map, it’s PORED over the map.

You’re not stronger THEN him, you’re stronger THAN him.

You steer your horse by the REINS; the king REIGNS over you. And it RAINS a lot on the plains.

You HOARD your gold; the barbarians form a great HORDE.

You take a BREATH, and you also BREATHE (note the “e” on the end of the word, which often seems to be missing).

SHOULD OF, COULD OF, WOULD OF should of been—er, have been—SHOULD HAVE, COULD HAVE, WOULD HAVE.

And now to get into some other infractions:

You go to the gym EVERY DAY, but you wear your EVERYDAY outfit. It’s only one word when it’s an adjective, describing something. Otherwise, it’s two words.

Here’s one that really irks me: I don’t LAY down, I LIE down. But I LAY an object on the table. Granted, this one can be really confusing. Lie and lay are two different verbs.

TO LIE is an action a person can take. (We’ll leave out of this discussion the meaning of telling an untruth). I lie down on the floor. The verb conjugation is as follows:

Present: lie
Past perfect: LAY
Present participle: lying
Past participle: lain

TO LAY is something one does TO or WITH something else. Example: I lay the book on the table.

Present: LAY
Past perfect: laid
Present participle: laying
Past participle: laid

What makes it rather confusing is that the past tense of lie is the same word as the present tense of lay: LAY. To help clarify this, here are more examples for you.

TO LIE:
I lie on the bed. He is lying on the floor.
Lie down on the ground, now!
She lay on the couch last night.
The kids had lain on the ground last week.

TO LAY:
Present: I lay the blanket on the sand. The kids are laying the table for lunch.
Lay your gun on the ground, now!
He laid his gun on the ground.
She had laid out all the instruments before the operation.

Note that all of these “to lay” examples involve doing something WITH or TO something else. That’s because TO LAY is a TRANSITIVE verb, whereby action is transferred to an object. Therefore an object is always required. You make a bed, you lay the table.

And that's it for this episode of Grammar Peeves. Hope it helps!