I was a liar, more or less

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. A little grammar knowledge is an embarrassing thing.

For most of my life, I walked around saying things like, “I wasn’t feeling well, so I laid down” -- blatantly flaunting my misunderstanding of “to lie” and “to lay.”

Then came the day when I began to get a clue. Actually it was more like half a clue. I learned that “lie” is something you do to yourself and “lay” is something you do to something (or someone) else. The dirty jokes eventually ceased, and I went forward in life, making it a point to say, “I lie down,” but, “I lay the book on the table.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t remember how their past tenses worked. So, in the end, I just traded in my former, “I laid on the beach,” for, “I lied on the beach.” They’re both equally wrong, but I like to believe that the second one is even stupider.

The most confusing thing about “lie” and “lay” is that the past tense of “lie” just happens to be “lay,” The past tense of “lay,” I eventually learned, is “laid.” Once this discovery is celebrated with even more dirty jokes, it becomes clear that, “Today I lie on the beach,” but, “Yesterday I lay on the beach.” And, “Today I lay the book on the table,” but, “Yesterday I laid the book on the table.”

“Lied” has nothing to do with lying down. It’s the past tense of a different “lie” -- the one that means to tell a fib. And I used it incorrectly for years.

But it took another tangle with half-grasped language rules for me to fully absorb the lesson about a little knowledge. It happened when I was flaunting my newfound knowledge of “less than” and “fewer than.”

I don’t know who told me that “less than” applies to quantities of things, such as gasoline, and “fewer than” applies to countable things, such as marbles. But it turns out it was a partial understanding of the difference. As a result, I went around making a mistake for years.

Consider the supermarket checkout lane: Yes, it should read “10 items or fewer” instead of “10 items or less.” But that’s not for the reason I explained above. Thinking of countable things versus quantities of things will help you most of the time, but not all of the time. Yes, if I have nine items in my cart, I have fewer than 10. But if I remove one item, I don’t have one fewer. I have one less.

The difference between “less” and “fewer” is that “less” is used for singular things while “fewer” is used for plural things.

I have less grammar knowledge than William Safire because I read fewer books on the subject. Knowledge is a singular thing but “books” refers to something plural.

This simple rule starts to get confusing with things such as money and gas. Money is sometimes measured in quantities, “a lot of money,” and sometimes measured in countable units, “nine dollars.” Same for gasoline. Your tank may hold a lot of gas, but that quantity might also be measured in gallons.

Fear not. Just remember the rule about singular versus plural things. “Gas” is singular, so it would take the word “less.” “Gallons” is plural, so you would have fewer gallons of gas.

Hopefully, with that simple rule, you’ll have less trouble and fewer problems than I did.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE is a freelance writer. She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.

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