Grounded in the Truth

As the daughter of a career newspaper writer, I feel compelled to maintain my subscription to the daily print paper.  I enjoy perusing it in a leisurely manner over breakfast, confident that a squirting grapefruit will not cause any electrical device to short circuit.  This past Saturday, however, I nearly experienced a short circuit of a different type.  I could not believe what I had just read.  Audio of the formidable "Miss O" (Miss O'Sullivan) at St. Mary's Episcopal School for Girls began playing in my head; she was a veritable Grammar Czarina, and the governing document of her domain was Walsh's Plain English Handbook.  My copy is dutifully shelved in the "language" section of my nonfiction bookcase, and I consulted it for confirmation of my observation.

The following sentence appeared an article about a suspect's surrender after a hostage situation:

"Officers quickly surrounded XXX as he lied on the ground."  

My mental image was of the suspect's telling falsehoods in the dirt.  But why would he talk to the dirt?  Perhaps he was fabricating some story while on the ground?  Then I realized that the Associated Press writer most certainly meant that the suspect was prone or supine as he was surrounded.  In plain English, he LAY on the ground.  I hope that perhaps some overzealous copy editor made the "correction" and that an AP writer did not commit this grammar infraction.  One of the disadvantages of print is that the error lives in perpetuity unless the story is corrected and reprinted.  In the electronic world such sins can be wiped clean without a trace.  Instant grammar absolution!  "Miss O" would have liked that.

And that's no lie.