sentence diagramming

A method of grammar instruction that relies on a standardized framework of lines and branches to reveal the syntactic structure of a sentence.

An earlier, simplified form of phrase-structure grammar, sentence diagramming was a popular form of traditional-grammar instruction in American schools from the late-19th century to the mid-20th century.

A method of diagramming sentences using word balloons was introduced by S.W. Clark in A Practical Grammar (1847). The now more familiar system of diagramming using lines and branches was developed by American educators Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg in Higher Lessons in English, 1877 (revised in Graded Lessons in English: An Elementary English Grammar, 1889).

See also:

• How to Diagram a Sentence (About.com Guide to Homework/Study Tips)
• "Make-Believe Grammar," by Gertrude Buck
• Parsing
• The Parts of Speech
• Ten Types of Grammar

Examples and Observations:

• "Part of the fun of diagramming sentences was that it didn't matter what they said. The dog could bark, chew gum, play chess--in the world of diagramming, sentences weren't about meaning so much as they were about subject, predicate, object, and their various dependents or modifiers. All you had to do was get the diagram right--the meaning was secondary. . . .
  
  "At my school, diagramming was part of our English classes for three years. Once the gates of elementary school slammed shut at the end of eighth grade I never encountered diagramming again."
  (Kitty Burns Florey, Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences. Melville House, 2006)



• "Reed and Kellogg's diagrams, sometimes called stick or line diagrams, are a rough and simplified form of phrase structure grammar. The authors employed a base line which in a general way represented the argument structure of the sentence; modifiers were placed on additional lines branching from the base line. . . .
  
  "The subject of the sentence always occurs in the leftmost slot on the main line; the verb complex (usually just treated as a unit) is written to the right of it, divided from the subject by a perpendicular line passing through the main line, and the direct object lies to the right of a line also perpendicular to the main line but not passing through it. Determiners like the and modifiers like crafty and large are written below the main line to illustrate that these words are less important to understanding the main thrust of meaning in the sentence than are the words on the main line. . . .
  
  "Though diagramming continues to be taught in some schools, it has never been the only way of teaching young students about the elements of language."
  (Laurel J. Brinton and Donna Brinton, The Linguistic Structure of Modern English. John Benjamins, 2010)



• "British school grammar is similar in many ways to American, differing mostly in the total absence of Reed and Kellogg diagramming."
  (H.A. Gleason, Linguistics and English Grammar. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966)



• "At some point the question of whether or not to teach sentence diagramming is likely to arise. Visual people like graphics. Sentence diagrams may help them see how one part of a sentence relates to another. . . . Allow students to use them if they wish to do so rather than requiring that everyone learn to diagram. . . . Diagramming is useful as a learning tool, but it should not be the goal of instruction."
  (Sharon Kingen, Teaching Language Arts in Middle Schools: Connecting and Communicating. Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000)



• "Sentence combining was developed in the 1960s, when researchers and teachers were looking for alternatives to teaching formal grammar (parts of speech, sentence diagramming).
  
  "Since then, more than 80 studies conducted during the last 40 years have demonstrated with few exceptions that sentence combining is an effective method for helping students produce more syntactically mature sentences . . .."
  (Bruce Saddler, "Sentence Construction Skills Through Sentence-Combining Practice." Best Practices in Writing Instruction, ed. by Steve Graham, Charles A. MacArthur, Jill Fitzgerald. Guilford Press, 2007)