Lay It On Me: A Quick Grammar Guide to Transitive vs Intransitive Verbs

Today’s blog post is a brief explanation of why a sentence may be incomplete without some additional words. It will also help you figure out how to punctuate dialogue and the difference between “lie” and “lay.”

(*Originally coined by the writers of The Simpsons, this delightful word for “acceptable” is now recognized by the dictionary!)

Sentences can be very simple: a subject does a verb to an object.

I(s) knocked over(v) the vase(o).

In fact, many sentences can be even simpler than that: just a subject and a verb.

The vase(s) fell(v).

But sometimes you need that object.

Sentences with transitive verbs are incomplete without an object

Let’s take that sentence I just wrote as an example. “But sometimes you need” has a subject and a verb. But without its object—without knowing what you need—it’s incomplete.

Verbs like “need” are transitive. That means they require an object.

Going back to the vase example:

She shaped the vase from clay.

Subject, verb, object, and a prepositional phrase.

But if you just wrote,

She shaped.

It’s not a complete sentence. Something is missing.

“Shaped,” like “need,” is a transitive verb. Something is shaped, something is needed.

How transitive verbs can help you remember dialogue punctuation

Another transitive verb: “say.” A sentence isn’t complete without specifying what is said.

“The vase has been damaged,” I said.

Can you spot the object—what was said? It’s in the quotation marks.

This is why the quotation marks end with a comma, not a period. “I said.” would be a sentence fragment, a subject and verb in unhappy isolation.

(What I’ve just written might irritate some linguists because it’s simplified. Technically, the dialogue could considered a complement completing the sentence rather than an object of the verb “said,” because it’s a full phrase or clause rather than a noun. But this is a quick grammar guide, not a linguistic treatise. The goal is to give you information you can use in your writing and self-editing. “Said is a transitive verb and you need to include what was said in the same sentence” is the useful takeaway.)

Transitive vs intransitive verbs and how to tell lie vs lay apart

Verbs that are not transitive are intransitive. They don’t need objects within the sentence.

I jump. “Jump” is intransitive. I don’t do jumping to something. (Though Merriam-Webster.com informs me it does have transitive forms, such as “I jumped a hurdle.”)

Some verbs can be either transitive or intransitive. I write in the morning. Intransitive. Or, I write this blog post in the morning. Transitive.

And some verbs are one or the other, and and knowing “transitive” vs “intransitive” can help you keep track of them:

“Lay,” meaning “to put down,” is transitive. The past tense of lay is “laid” (“I laid my burden down” and “the chicken laid an egg”).

“Lie,” meaning “to rest in a flat or horizontal position,” is intransitive. Unfortunately, the past tense of lie is “lay” (“I lay down on the couch”).

So, in light of that unfortunate overlap of “lay,” how do you keep in mind which word to use? Eventually, you keep getting it right often enough and it becomes habit. To begin with, it helps to pause and check what version you want in the present tense (even if you’re writing in past tense). Are you doing it to something? “Lay.” Are you doing it in itself? “Lie.” Then, if you want past tense, switch to “laid” or “lay” accordingly. (It may also help to state explicitly: the past tense of “lay” is not “lay.” English has a handful of verbs that are the same in present and past tense: hit, cost, quit, and read are examples, “read” being pronounced differently in its past and present tense forms. But if that was the case for “lay,” we wouldn’t have “lie” and “laid.”)

A useful mnemonic I’ve heard for remembering this is the phrase LAY IT ON ME!

You don’t LIE IT ON ME.

“It” is the object. “You” are the subject, specifically an “implied subject” made clear by context.

(Another option—and it’s going to be a bit crude, but if being crude in your own head is what helps you get this grammar trick down, do so with your copy editor’s blessing: If we say of someone that They need to get laid, we are making them the object of some hypothetical partner’s physical affections. That hypothetical partner is the implied subject. We don’t say They need to get lay.)

(And in closing: as I wrote that last parenthetical, I realized another possible mnemonic: “lay/laid” and “pay/paid” both rhyme and work the same way. “Pay me!” and “I need to get paid”—in present and past tense, I am the object of the verb “pay.”)