When you think about a sentence, you usually think about words — not lines. But sentence diagramming brings geometry into grammar. If you weren't taught to diagram a sentence, this might sound a ...

I read an article last month about the lost art of diagramming sentences, a once-required skill that many American children had to master if they wanted to pass English back in the mid-20th century.

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 hated ...

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.

D.F. (Dave) Oliveria joined The Spokesman-Review in 1984. He currently is a columnist and compiles the Huckleberries Online blog and writes about North Idaho in his Huckleberries column.

There are plenty of people out there—not only English teachers but also amateur language buffs like me—who believe that diagramming a sentence provides insight into the mind of its perpetrator. The ...

What tools does a grammarian need? A brain helps, and so does a computer, but surely one of our most essential tools is some kind of diagramming system. How can we think about a sentence’s structure, ...

The recently revised Standards of Learning of the Commonwealth of Virginia consider sentence diagramming an “essential skill” and mandate that it be taught in grades 6-8. Frankly, if English teachers ...

Robert, thanks for expanding the dialogue by disagreeing on diagramming sentences (you are far from alone). The important point, though, is that diagramming is just a metaphor (or perhaps I should say ...