Hi folks, This is my sentence: The towels and water she placed by her side, then laid on her back, the torch’s beam a reassuring warm circle in the darkness. Is 'laid' right? Or should it be 'lay' or 'layed'? ('She' is doing the laying). Many thanks.
lay You're using past tense (she placed by her side), so she will have to do the past tense of "lie" (as in lie down), and that's "lay." It's confusing because "laid" sounds perfectly reasonable to the ear. But only use that when you mean "placed." That gives you this funny opportunity: "The towels and water she laid by her side, then lay on her back. . ." Think of the "D" in laid as "direct object." It wants a target that's being set down.
To me, your sentence reads as if she placed the towels and water by her side and then she laid the towels and water on her back. I think you need an extra "she". The towels and water, she placed by her side then she lay on her back. The second half of the sentence is a comma splice, so strictly should be a separate sentence. Although, I am still not comfortable with the first part of the sentence. Was she standing when she placed the towels and water? If so, she could not have placed the towels and water by her side because at that point, she was not lying down. If she were standing, then maybe she threw the towels and water on the ground then lay down by the side of them. Or was she sitting on the ground? In that case, your original sentence with the extra "she" and the corrected "lay" IMO is fine. She sat down and placed the water and towels by her side. Then she lay on her back staring up at the torch's beam, which threw a reasurring warm circle in the darkness. Putting a comma and "which" between the two sentences avoids the comma splice. My thoughts may help or alternatively may confuse. Hope it is the first.
People lie (or in past tense lay, as Seven Crowns said), objects lay or can be laid. To confuse the issue people get laid, but that's slang and doesn't mean the same thing, though it often involves lying, in both senses of the word.
As has been pointed out, the correct word in your sentence is "lay," for the past tense of "lie." Which prompts me to point out that your follow-up comment also confuses the two words "lay" and "lie." If she is "laying" something down, such as the towel, that's correct. If you want to say that she is reclining, then it would be "lying," a form of the word "lie," not "lay." It's confusing, because the past tense of "lie" is "lay," but the past tense of "lay" is "laid" (not "layed").
