The next pair of words we’ll look at is ‘anymore’ and ‘any more.’ As one word, ‘anymore’ has a meaning related to time and is almost always used in negative sentences when referring to something that you no longer do or something that no longer happens. For example:

~ I don’t play basketball anymore.

~ We can go outside now because it’s not raining anymore

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As two words, ‘any more’ is an adjective phrase that we use to talk about a quantity of something. For example:

~I hope there aren’t any more questions.

~No thank you, I don’t want any more coffee.

Now we’ll discuss a few verbs that can be very tricky: to lay, to lie, and to lie. Why is the word ‘lie’ written twice? Because it has two different meanings. ‘To lay’ and ‘to lie’ are very commonly misused, and we have the conjugations to blame for this. First, let’s talk about what these words mean. ‘To lay’ means to put, and it’s a transitive verb. So automatically, we know that it requires an object. ‘To lie’ means to be in a horizontal position, and it is intransitive. Therefore, it does not take an object. Consider the following sentences:

~I always lay my clothes on my bed after I fold them.

~I always lie on my bed after I get home from work.

In the second example sentence, far too many people use the word ‘lay’ instead of ‘lie,’ which is incorrect. And why do they do this? As was said before, blame the conjugations! The past of the verb ‘to lie’ is ‘lay.’ For example:

~ Yesterday I lay on my bed while I watched television.

Now that that has been cleared up, we can talk about the other meaning of the verb ‘to lie,’ and that is to not tell the truth. The past of this verb is ‘lied.’ So, just to be safe, let’s clarify again, via example:

~He lied when he said he missed the lesson because he was sick. (to not tell the truth)

~We lay down after we exercised.

These are two past tense sentences, and hopefully after looking them over, it becomes clear when we use which verb, and in which form. Hopefully this has been a helpful and informative rundown of some English grammar that can cause trouble!

A. Edstrom

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