Sentence Diagramming 101: Fun with Linguistics (and Movies)

Dedication

For my students who love movies

-JMP

For my husband and my kids, who are my reason, and for my mom and dad, who have always encouraged and believed in me

-LMM

Acknowledgements

Writing a textbook is a huge undertaking, as I have learned since this is technically my second time (though the first was more a compilation of work that we had to wrangle into a coherent whole: check out Composition and Grammar for HCC by HCC to see the final version!). This has been a different kind of journey, though, since I’ve been here mostly by myself—and I learned that I cannot be trusted when left alone. I tend to procrastinate and overestimate my abilities in relation to the space-time continuum (not to mention my apparently excessive love of exclamation marks!). I cannot express my level of gratitude to Laura Mita, who graciously jumped in to help with the exercises when I realized there was no way I could finish all of this by my deadline. Without her help, this book would have taken me much longer to complete! And of course, thank you to the artists who create the film magic that gives me so much to talk about in these pages. Finally, thanks to my ever-patient family. I love you guys.

-JMP

Thanks to Jenifer Paquette for trusting me with your book. Working together was fun, and this brought me back to when I loved diagramming sentences. I appreciate all of your help along the way (and I loved having a work reason to talk film and TV). Even though I knew this would take some time, as all writing does, I was (am) excited to be part of it. Thank you to my husband and kids who put up with my constant talk about parts of speech and sentence structure while working on it.

-LMM

Introduction

Welcome to Sentence Diagramming 101! Here you will find a thorough explanation of English grammar as well as a visual guide through the art of sentence diagramming. This book covers the basics, gives examples, and offers practice exercises, but you will have to visit the accompanying website at sentencediagramming101.com to find the Answer Key and helpful video lectures for each section. Don’t worry—it’s free! No access codes to wor ry about.

First things first: introductions. You’re probably wondering why you should trust me to teach you all this grammar stuff (and sentences like that probably don’t raise your confidence level)—let me tell you who I am. Here’s my fancy biography:

Dr. Jenifer Paquette teaches English in higher education with her areas of expertise running from the history of the English language and the intricacies of grammatical rules to guidelines for effective writing and communication across disciplines. When she isn’t grading essays or editing manuscripts for academics and creative writers, JM Paquette spends her time writing fantasy and paranormal romance novels. She can be found at 4horsemenpublications.com, on Twitter @editorjmp13 and @authorjmp, and as Author JM Paquette on Facebook and Instagram.

That sounds fabulous, but here’s why I’m really here: I’m a super nerd, and I love words with my soul. I love thinking about how the words in the English language are put together, how we make sense of them, and how they came to be that way in the first place (hint: England got invaded—a lot). I also love the idea of drawing, but I am not talented in that area (or dedicated enough to put in the practice required to improve my skills). Sentence diagramming fulfills my need to create something moderately artistic, but also basic enough for my wobbly lines (seriously, I’m talking stick figure level of drawing skills). I have left my hand-drawn diagrams out of this book (and learned to use Adobe Illustrator! You’re welcome.), but you should explore your ability to make straight lines of all directions as you work your way through the intricacies of English grammar.

I know that there will be moments where you pause and think, Do I even know any words? We’ve all been there (especially while writing some of the examples in this book!)—and we will get through this together. Even though grammar can seem intimidating and sometimes frustrating, studying how words work can also be rewarding, especially when you see a complicated sentence laid bare like a dissected animal on a science tray. I’ll be honest here—I never enjoyed looking at frog innards as much as I love pulling apart sentences to see how they function (That’s why I was an English major and not a science major!). Come with me on this journey! I promise you will think about language differently.

Disclaimer: I love exclamation marks. Seriously. I will not apologize for what may seem like an excessive number of them in the pages to come, but consider this fair warning to those of you who do not appreciate such visual depictions of excitement. What can I say? I really enjoy talking about grammar!

How does this book work?

This book is broken into two main parts. The first part, Start Here, covers the basics—parts of speech and word function—and introduces you to the way we talk about language. Once you’ve mastered those concepts, you are ready for diagramming, but we ease into it in part two, starting first with patterns (the way sentences are formed) and phrases (small groups of words working together). Once you have those ideas down, you’re ready for more complicated topics like verbals (gerunds, participles, and infinitives) and clauses (independent and dependent). Finally, you can tackle sentence types (simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex) before wading into the really weird stuff (questions, commands, expletives, and poetic la nguage).

Each section begins with an explanation and examples, includes any relevant Brief Notes that relate to those issues, and ends with a practice exercise to test your understanding. The answers to these exercises can be found on the accompanying website for this book: sentencediagramming101.com. Once you reach the diagramming section, each part will include example images along with a written description of how the sentences are functioning.

This book does not contain information about common errors in writing or punctuation rules—this is intentional. In the world of the internet, all of this information is available with a quick google search. The accompanying website for this book does contain some information created over my years teaching composition courses, so you can review the rules there, but other reputable websites include the OWL (Online Writing Lab) at Purdue, Writing Commons, and even Grammar Bytes. If you really want to explore the world of composition and grammar, feel free to check out this reference: Composition and Grammar for HCC by HCC (by the HCC Editorial Board—psst, I’m the editor!). This book focuses on very specific grammatical functions and the rules of sentence diagramming—and that is plenty to cover!

If you have questions about anything in this book, or about sentence diagramming in general, feel free to email me at [email protected]. I have included video lectures for each topic on the website as well, but I know my explanations can be awkward sometimes, so feel free to reach out. You can also check out the discussion board on the website to see if your question has already been answered!

Disclaimer: I will not do your homework for you! I’m an educator, and I cannot help you cheat—but I am happy to discuss how you are thinking about the sentence and prod you in the right direction. I love discussing the intricacies of language (clearly, since I wrote a book about it!), so send me random questions any time.

Thoughts on grammar

At its core, this book is about grammar, so it makes sense to take a moment to discuss what that means, both historically and more generally in today’s world. Have you ever noticed the strange coincidence that a magical book of spells (go out under the full moon, dance around a fire, say these words—and your desire will manifest!) and spelling , the word we use to describe the proper way of writing down a word, have the same sound? No coi ncidence!

The words have long been related, but it all starts with the idea of grammar. Today, grammar describes the accepted use of a language (as determined by the users of that language—well, the users with authority in that society, that is). Yes, this is arbitrary and largely unfair, with massive implications for everything from society to government to social status and economics—but those are topics covered in other books—and we shall stick to the broad strokes of history for our purposes in this book.

For English grammar, we tend to rely on the English (as in from England) rules—but those rules were established by Latin-speaking monks (long before the French invaded and changed the language—before the pronunciation of the language’s vowels shifted—before Shakespeare showed up and started making up noises for things he wanted to convey—and well before the internet arrived and shifted things again*). The Christian monks who recorded the earliest works in English thought that Latin was the best language, so they created/followed a system of grammar that made sense for that language.

The problem, of course, is that English is not a language derived from Latin. It’s Germanic and follows different rules for many things—but the biggest problem is that Latin is an inflected language (it changes the word ending to determine meaning) and German is not inflected, relying on syntax, or word order to convey meaning. For example, in Italian, a Romance language (because it comes from the Romans—not because it has anything to do with hearts and flowers), words are inflected to show their word function in a sentence. Meaning that parlare means to speak while parlo means I speak and parli means you speak and parliamo means we all speak and so on. The word ending tells the listener how the word is functioning—subject and person—and what tense it’s in! English only changes the word ending once in all of present tense, and that’s when we add -s to the end of 3rd person singular (I speak, you speak, he/she speaks, we speak, you (all) speak, they speak).

These languages function very differently. In Latin and other Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish), a word’s ending conveys meaning. In a Germanic language like English, word order or syntax determines meaning (I speak—I is the subject because it comes first!). There is some room for flexibility in English (just listen to Yoda speak in Star Wars!), but there is a limit beyond which meaning is lost. If I said: English is flexibility for room some is in there, you would probably be very confused. Word order is crucial for comprehension in English. So, our first problem is that those rules established by early Christian monks try to force English to behave like Latin (and it really doesn’t!). That’s why English has rules that apply sometimes but have hundreds of exceptions to the rule. This is especially true in spelling.

Our spelling system in English is atrocious—the result of England being invaded by different-language-speaking peoples—but instead of adopting the tongue of the invader, English just absorbed those words and used them both side by side, practically doubling its vocabulary with each new invader! Making spelling even more complicated is the fact that English spelling wasn’t codified until the first dictionary in 1755, when Samuel Johnson recorded the most popular spelling of about 40,000 words in the language. These spellings stuck, but as the lexicographer movement grew, more people added the spellings they knew, and eventually, you have the mess of rules and styles found in English today.

This doesn’t even begin to address the inconsistencies and social factors that have shaped the language since then. Suffice it to say that English grammar is complicated due to a long sordid history. For further information on this topic, I recommend David Crystal’s The Stories of English (the history of grammar) and Spell It Out (history of spelling). Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue is a fun read with some insightful observations, but it is dated and slightly inaccurate in some translations (but solid for the 1990s?).

So, let’s return to the original topic: grammar and magical spells. Well, spelling (words) and spells (magic) have the same origin and could mean either thing for a long time. Grammar actually comes from the French word grimoire—you guessed it—a book containing magical spells. The idea is that the rules of English usage were so secret and arcane that they might as well be magical spells! So a grimoire/grammar book from the Middle Ages could be a book of magical spells—or it could be a book like this one detailing how the words in English work together (you’d be burned as a witch for possessing either, though, for most of history). Eventually, these two concepts—grimoire/grammar and spells/spelling—became so intertwined that we call a book containing knowledge that is complicated and perhaps secretive a grimoire. This book you are holding is a grimoire—and it contains not only the rules of English syntax—but also images to convey those concepts visually. What could this combination of words and symbols be if not magical? I hope you brought your wand (a pencil is strongly recommended, though brave souls can use a pen).

TL;DR**: Grammar is magical?

Overview of sentence diagramming history

Storytime! I was first exposed to sentence diagramming as a way to understand language in elementary school, but we didn’t spend a lot of time on it. I imagine if I had gone to Catholic school, I would have learned more since diagramming is still taught there. However, my true exposure to diagramming happened when I was already teaching college. The professor scheduled to teach the linguistics class unexpectedly passed away, and I was given the class with less than two weeks to prepare. Teach grammar? I thought. I know grammar. Of course, I can do that!

And then I got a copy of the previous syllabus and realized that the course outcomes included sentence diagramming. No problem! I told myself. I did some of that in elementary school. I’ll relearn it.

Fast forward to the next two weeks spent in the Special Collections section of the library studying sentence diagramming from the original book by Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg—a dusty tome published in 1897 (the revised version!). This was before the internet made such things easily available online. I learned (re-learned?) diagramming while wearing gloves to read a tiny, brittle, yellow-paged book, taking notes with my pencil on a yellow legal pad (the only things I was allowed to bring inside the room). My, how the world of research has changed! Well, the world has moved on in a lot of ways, though I imagine some people still spend time in a room like that researching other topics. But you don’t have to learn sentence diagramming that way—especially since you have this book!

So, what is this thing called sentence diagramming? Where does it come from? Let me answer that second question for you now (since the answer to the first is the book you’re holding right now). Sentence diagramming emerged as a response to a cultural shift in American university values in the mid-1800s. Higher education has always had a divide between the sciences and the arts in this country—mostly along the general idea that math and science are hard topics with definite answers and provable information while the arts (literature and humanities) are softer topics open to interpretation and subject to opinion and changing fashions. In other words, math and science have right and wrong answers while English does not. As you can imagine, English departments did not appreciate the suggestion that their beloved discipline was somehow a willy-nilly collection of feelings and subjective criticism without anything definite—so they decided to turn English into math and created sentence diagramming.

Early attempts at quantifying the English language were … interesting, to say the least. The first models used cloud-like formations, balloons, or word bubbles to depict the relationship between words. W.S. Clark published his system of diagramming in A Practical Grammar: In Which Words, Phrases, & Sentences are Classified According to Their Offices and Their Various Relationships to Each Other in 1847 (yes, that title is something else!). In the 1870s, educators Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg joined forces to create their own system, loosely based on Clark, that would illustrate the relationships between words using lines like a math equation. Their original diagramming system was based on the essential math grid of an x-axis and a y-axis. They explain their system in their 1877 book Higher Lessons in English: a Work on English Grammar and Composition. This book was revised in 1890, 1895, 1897, and again in 1907, as they continued to fine-tune their system. The concept of sentence diagramming is pretty simple: just like math equations are laid out in a specific way with symbols to signify relationships, diagramming is a pictorial representation of the way words interact with one another in a sentence. English does have right and wrong answers—just like the hard sciences!

Each word in English has a specific function in the sentence, and those functions can be placed within specific line constructions to visually depict that purpose. Just like you can get the wrong answer on a math problem, you can put the word in the wrong place or use the wrong symbol in diagramming. Grades are no longer left to the whim of an English professor—there is a right way to respond! While sentence diagramming was embraced in certain circles in the early 1900s, attention has since waxed and waned, with the concept coming in and out of vogue as the education system flirted with different methods of teaching grammar over the decades. While those who attended Catholic school in the latter part of the 1900s may recall diagramming (with a nun smacking their knuckles with a ruler at each wrong answer!), more recent students may have never encountered this practice.

One thing we do need to address when discussing sentence diagramming is the question first asked when diagramming first arose in English departments: does this practice make better writers? Again, I refer you to my response on the back of this book—a very solid maybe. Diagramming does give you a visual sense of the language and a spatial awareness of the way words interact with one another. Those who learn this system will be able to analyze language with a critical eye. Now, does that ability to see the way the language works, to peek under the hood if you will, translate into creating more engaging sentences when writing? Maybe. The diagrammer certainly knows how the words ought to work together. But will that knowledge positively affect their crafting ability? Perhaps. Does the student who can label each part of the heart accurately and understand how it works have the ability to perform effective heart surgery? Can the person who understands how a car engine works