The design firm Pop Chart Lab has taken the first lines of famous novels and diagrammed those sentences. This one shows the opening of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
One of the things I absolutely HATED (and I’m not at all certain “hated” adequately describes the depth of my disdain) about elementary school English was the seeming futility and utter pointlessness of diagramming sentences. Though my young brain couldn’t have described it this way at the time, there I few things that define “mental masturbation” more than the dying art of pulling a sentence apart and turning into a random jumble of impossible to discern bad pop art. No matter how hard I tried, I never could manage to wrap my head around the need for and utility of diagramming sentences. It seemed then, as it does now, the very definition of busy work.
As an adult and a writer, the concept of diagramming sentences still befuddles me. What some consider to be a “fairly simple idea” in fact has a long and somewhat complicated history. The origins of the practice have been traced back to 1877, when two professors at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg, wrote a book called Higher Lessons in English. In it, they argued that students would better understand how to construct sentences if they plotted them out as graphic structure (And they’d better understand how to drive a car if they had to disassemble the engine any time they wanted to drive anywhere). Thus began a 50-60 year period in which English teachers did their best to convince children to swear off writing forever.
My frustration then was as it is now: outside of creating controversy and confusion, what use does diagramming sentences have? Does it teach anything besides how to diagram sentences? Does it even make sense? Or is it really the classic textbook definition of mental masturbation?
As if there’s any doubt as to where I’m going to come down on that question….
Despite the best efforts of several English teachers, I fell in love with the intricacies of language and became a writer. I never did understand the hows or whys of diagramming sentences, but that inability doesn’t seem to have proven a deterrent. Outside of leaving me feeling pretty stupid (a recurring theme in my life, but that’s another story best left for another time), I learned to string together complete sentences in a reasonably coherent fashion. I love words and the power and beauty they possess, and I’m fortunate to have been blessed with the ability to construct sentences with a high degree of proficiency.
Just don’t ask me to diagram one.
