Cry, Laugh, and Cry Again

If you’re one to notice errors that occasionally turn up in otherwise well-published books, perhaps, like me, you have concluded they seem to pile up near the end of the book. It seems as if the printer (typesetter?) crowds words together in order not to need another page, or the proofreader, or even the author checking the galleys, wants not to spend another minute on this manuscript and hurries with such a speed, he misses some dillies.

This happened in Bloody Crimes. Near the end of book is a statement that includes a singular subject with the verb “lie” for the past tense form, such as, “Yesterday the book lie on this table,” when it should have been “lay,” whether singular or plural. That line is crowded well enough to lead me to think the printer might have chosen “lie” over “lay,” just to save space and get all the words on that line. For in modern print, “lay” takes up more room than does “lie.” Then just a few paragraphs later, we read the correct version of “while he lay in state.” I think the hideous error originated and ended with the publisher.

Remember, in an earlier blog I pointed out that a regular anchor at C-SPAN said twice that President Ford’s body lied in state. That was a shock.

Perhaps we need a stimulus bill to straighten out the country on the verbs to lie and to lay. I could teach that, with no assistants. I’d need a chalkboard, a piece of chalk, a few students in front of me, and then a camera filming it for the rest of the country. One fifty-minute session would do. Wouldn’t one billion dollars in the budget be about right for that job?

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