Every week I will demonstrate an example of poor English where a different word is used from the one intended. Sometimes this creates a grammatically incorrect sentence. Unfortunately, the mistake is usually so pervasive that we all do it and such errors are usually made by those who should know better – journalists working for national or global media outlets such as newspapers and television
Set / Sit
Like Lay / Lie a few weeks back, this is very much about the object doing or being done to – i.e. one is a transitive verb and the other is an intransitive verb. I won’t explain the difference because I go into a little detail here on the other post.
Here, set is the transitive verb requiring an object and sit is the intransitive verb and does not require an object. In short, you sit yourself down or you set something down.
More Quick and Dirty Tips
