Lie also means to make a falst statement (骗，说错） "You lied to me!!!" There is a small grammical difference, but who cares about grammer right :p. Verb Past Tense lie lay lay laid lie lied (骗） I think of "lay" as a verb doing something to another thing. Right: "I'm laying the plates down" "I lay my newspaper down" Wrong: "I'm lying the plates down, I lie my newspaper down" To answer you question, the newspaper is lying down -- you are just describing the condition of the paper. but you cannot say "I'm going to lie this newspaper down". Yea I hate grammer too source: http://grammartips.homestead.com/lie.html

This is one of the bits of English that even native speakers often get wrong.

petey UW is correct. I couldn't explain it better.

"After my mother lays the table our cat likes to lie on it". It's obvious that the mother doesn't lie on the table, she just puts dishes on the table. But after that the cat jumps on the table and lies on it.

You lie down on the sofa, and you lay down a book. Lie is for something you do. After a pronoun (I, you, he, she). Lay is detached. The pronoun lays the object. Hope that makes sense!