#64

His coffin will be taken to the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft in the Palace of Westminster where he will lay at rest for 24 hours.

BBC News online, April 9, 2017

Shocking ignorance from the BBC. The verb is ‘lie’, not ‘lay’, and the expression is ‘lie in rest’, not ‘at’.

This was corrected after some hours. However much later in the day this heading appeared in Mail Online:

Hero PC is flanked by police guard of honour as his body is brought to lay in the Palace of Westminster

This was not corrected by the next day.

For a full explanation of lie and lay, see Grammar in Style Matters.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.