Lay vs. Laid

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Good afternoon.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Sharon Samaska calling from Connecticut.

Well, hello, Sharon from Connecticut. How are you?

I’m good.

Well, I’ve been a medical transcriptionist for many, many years, and we continually encounter the following problem. The surgeon tells us the patient was brought to the operating room, and I quote, L-A-I-D laid supine on the operating room table. We’ve got a lot of conflicts among us. I’m an English major. My feeling is if the patient lays themselves down, you don’t use L-A-I-D. It’s L-A-Y. If the surgeon lays the patient down as if the patient were an inanimate object, then you must go, I assume, with the L-A-I-D. The old school used to say anything that was alive was always the lie, lay, lane, and anything that was not alive was lay, laid, laid. Please help us because we’re having a big fight about this.

Happy to, happy to.

Well, you’re right.

Okay.

That English major was worth it.

Woo-hoo!

I never heard it explained as animate and inanimate, but that’s kind of interesting.

Okay, so the sentence in question here again is what, Sharon?

The patient was brought to the operating room and laid supine on the operating room table.

Okay, the patient was brought to the operating room and laid supine on the operating room table.

Okay, so the point is that there are two different things going on in this sentence, right? There are two different verbs. The patient was brought into the operating room, and then the question is, what happened next?

Correct.

Right? And if you put a was after that and, then that would make everything clear, right?

So was laid, right. The patient was brought and was laid, and then suddenly there’s some clarity.

That works.

Yeah, if the surgeon does the laying down of the patient as an inanimate object.

However, if I’m the patient and I’m on the stretcher and the surgeon tells me, move over onto the OR table, then the patient’s moving themselves.

So the patient is actually then laying on the operating room table.

Well, no, the patient is lying on the operating team.

Okay, yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah, and let’s hope the patient isn’t inanimate.

That doesn’t speak very well for the doctor.

They might be, no, but if they’re under anesthetic, right? Sometimes you are, but many times when your stretcher is rolled into the operating room, you are not, you’re very conscious, you’re not under anesthesia yet.

So you get up and put yourself on the operating room table?

Correct.

You scoot over when they tell you to scoot over from table to table.

And my feeling is if you’re doing the scooting, then you’re doing the lying, or if you’re going to make it past tense because he’s dictating this in the past tense, the patient was brought to the hour and the patient lay, lie, lay, right, lay, on the operating room table.

Sharon, I see what you’re saying, though. I mean, there is a confusion there if you don’t have the word was before laid.

Correct.

I think that’s where they could be a little bit more clear because technically they could be right that the patient was brought to the operating room and understood was laid.

Right, so they’ve got an omitted was there.

Really, just putting it back in there solves the problem and wash your hands of it and move on to the next bad sentence.

Yeah.

Well, they have a lot of those sometimes. We have some who are very great grammarians, and we have others who are not.

-huh.

The sharper ones are the grammarians, right?

Yeah, some people are good with a prefix and a suffix, and some people are just better with an appendix.

Exactly.

Or a knife.

Well, Sharon, keep up the good work.

Well, thank you very much, and I appreciate the call.

Sure, go back and tell them stat.

I will.

I will tell them I was right all along.

Right on, sister.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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