Sponsor Message I asked her to show me, and for an example she used the first sentence she recalls diagramming: "The dog barked." "By drawing a line and writing 'dog' on the left side of the line ...

Sentence diagramming is the long division of English. It involves a bewildering array of lines and diagonal branches. It is loathed as an elementary school chore. And it is presumed to be obsolete.

Here’s an example, applied to a typically worthy sentence (the diagram comes courtesy of Google Books): For a long time, sentence diagramming flourished throughout the American school system ...

Sentence diagramming was once a widespread technique for teaching kids how to analyze the structure of a sentence. If you had to do it in school, you either loved it or you hated it. Most kids ...

Be careful though - if you only ever use simple sentences in your writing you don’t add much detail, so your reader could lose interest. Compound ... For example: George wanted to stay outside ...

Nobody can top my sentences. Photo by Richard Ellis/Getty Images At the Slate Political Gabfest's live D.C. show this week, Emily, David, and John tried to diagram a sentence uttered in Sun City ...

It really does draw a picture of what language looks like." I asked her to show me, and for an example she used the first sentence she recalls diagramming: "The dog barked." "By drawing a line and ...