In Founding Grammars: How Early America's War Over Words Shaped Today's Language,* Rosemarie Ostler writes, "People who wanted to advance in life needed a command of educated-sounding English." Today still, the social and, to use an ugly word, class dimensions of language couple your status with the kind of English you speak and write.
In my editing class I continue to insist on the lie/lay distinction, despite the perpetual confusion over usage. My students do not hear that distinction. They do not use it in speech, and they evidently have not often been required to observe it in writing. I go over it in class, repeat it in exercises, tell them that it is going to be on the midterm and final examinations, suggest that they might get the principal parts tattooed on their wrists, and somebody always gets it wrong.
In desperate moments, which tend to break out during grading, I've been tempted to heed the counsel of despair and just tell them that lie, laid, laid, laying will see them through to the end of days.
But today I take heart from a video on lie and lay posted at Merriam-Webster.com by the admirable Emily Brewster. In going over the basics compactly and clearly, she makes two salient points. First, the lie/lay distinction is not one of those crotchets invented by grammarians attempting to turn English into Latin, but one native to the language. Second, it has persisted in the language for seven centuries, even though speakers and writers regularly gum it up.
Good enough for me. I'm keeping it with those distinctions worth preserving for anyone looking for a command of educated-sounding English.
*I plan to review the book here, once I've had time to finish reading it.