# Who remembers diagramming sentences?



## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Interesting piece about diagramming. I loved diagramming sentences.

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/08/22/341898975/a-picture-of-language-the-fading-art-of-diagramming-sentences


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## CegAbq (Mar 17, 2009)

Oooohhhh .... I DO, I DO!!! And yep, we are dating ourselves  

I didn't do a lot of it, but I did enjoy it.

Another weird English class thing I enjoyed: one of my high school English teachers had everyone select a paragraph from the newspaper and find the word origin of every word in the sentence. That was the beginning of my enthrallment with languages. I think I would have enjoyed being a linguist.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

CegAbq said:


> Another weird English class thing I enjoyed: one of my high school English teachers had everyone select a paragraph from the newspaper and find the word origin of every word in the sentence. That was the beginning of my enthrallment with languages. I think I would have enjoyed being a linguist.


Oooh, woulda loved that!!!

Betsy


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

And a couple years later I learned how to use a slide rule, if you want to talk about things they don't teach any more at all.


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## CegAbq (Mar 17, 2009)

NogDog said:


> And a couple years later I learned how to use a slide rule, if you want to talk about things they don't teach any more at all.


I soooo used a slide rule throughout high school & 1st 2 years of college. [more 'dating' here ... ]

My kids were all good in math, but their teachers were clueless about how to actually use a slide rule.
One of my daughters & her best friend in HS took it upon themselves to learn how to use a slide rule {PRIDE} & my daughter used the slide rule that my parents gave me when I began taking trig & calculus in HS!
Then when that daughter graduated valedictorian, they created the "Golden Slide Rule Award" and she was the first recipient.
NERDS, WE Are!:

1. If you like nerds, raise your hand. If you don't, raise your standards. ― Violet Haberdasher
7. So you're a little weird? Work it! A little different? OWN it! Better to be a nerd than one of the herd! ― Mandy Hale


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## NapCat (retired) (Jan 17, 2011)

Oh Yes ! I also loved diagramming sentences (I can still do it).










Slide rule also, although I doubt if I could draw parallel lines with one today. Giggle


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

We were taught to use a slide rule but never really had to use one.  I still have one, though.  . I think I gave my big one to my engineering granddaughter, but I still have a small one.  I can still multiply using it, but that's about it.

Betsy


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## Sandpiper (Oct 28, 2008)

I remember diagramming sentences.  "Put the accents on the right syllable."  Oh no!!  I was scared hearing that from a teacher.  I could not hear the difference . . . until senior year in high school.  That year English lit teacher made that dreaded request.  And suddenly "I heard".  

Phonetics, anyone?  To this day I am thankful I was taught phonetics.


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## Sean Sweeney (Apr 17, 2010)

*runs screaming from the room*


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## Linjeakel (Mar 17, 2010)

I learned to use a slide rule just before the first calculators appeared and so never got to be that good at it.

Judging by the earlier comments, the diagramming of sentences is something taught primarily to my generation, but I've never even heard of it. Perhaps it's something uniquely American? Having read the linked article, I'm not sure I can see the point of it - it seems like it's intention is to help you to understand the structure of a sentence, but you have to be able to understand that structure in order to properly diagram it in the first place.  

The way I see it, if you want to understand language then read, read, read, read ....


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## Sandpiper (Oct 28, 2008)

Sandpiper said:


> Phonetics, anyone? To this day I am thankful I was taught phonetics.


I the late '60s, IIRC, I was proofreading with a co-worker who was a few years older and had more education than I. She was reading the article out loud. Came to a word and she was stuck. What's that word? I knew. It was just a bunch of letters to her. She had not been taught phonetics.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Sandpiper said:


> I the late '60s, IIRC, I was proofreading with a co-worker who was a few years older and had more education than I. She was reading the article out loud. Came to a word and she was stuck. What's that word? I knew. It was just a bunch of letters to her. She had not been taught phonetics.


I never learned phonetics (elementary school mid 60s). But I've always read a LOT. I may not always pronounce a word that I've only seen written correctly, but I know them. Of course, my father made us look up all the words we didn't know in a big ol' dictionary, so that might of helped. Wish I'd had a Kindle then instead of having to haul out that dictionary that lived upstairs. 

Betsy


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## CegAbq (Mar 17, 2009)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> I never learned phonetics (elementary school mid 60s). But I've always read a LOT. I may not always pronounce a word that I've only seen written correctly, but I know them. Of course, my father made us look up all the words we didn't know in a big ol' dictionary, so that might of helped. Wish I'd had a Kindle then instead of having to haul out that dictionary that lived upstairs.
> 
> Betsy


I learned phonetics in the mid 60s elementary school in Alvin TX. Parents also made us look up in the dictionary (actually made us inclined to not ask what a word meant! )


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

CegAbq said:


> Parents also made us look up in the dictionary (actually made us inclined to not ask what a word meant! )


Indeed. 

Betsy


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> I never learned phonetics (elementary school mid 60s). But I've always read a LOT. I may not always pronounce a word that I've only seen written correctly, but I know them. Of course, my father made us look up all the words we didn't know in a big ol' dictionary, so that might of helped. Wish I'd had a Kindle then instead of having to haul out that dictionary that lived upstairs.
> 
> Betsy


Surely I'm not the only one who read the dictionary just for fun?? 

As far a diagramming sentences - pick me, pick me! Dear Mrs. Finney, my 4th grade teacher, started me on diagramming for extra credit because I was always done with assignments before the rest of the class. I loved it! It was like a puzzle or the paper equivalent (at the time) of what would be a video game now.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

crebel said:


> Surely I'm not the only one who read the dictionary just for fun??
> 
> As far a diagramming sentences - pick me, pick me! Dear Mrs. Finney, my 4th grade teacher, started me on diagramming for extra credit because I was always done with assignments before the rest of the class. I loved it! It was like a puzzle or the paper equivalent (at the time) of what would be a video game now.


I do now. But when my father was making me do it...youthful rebellion!

And yes, exactly, diagramming was a fun puzzle!

Betsy


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## C. J. Sears (Nov 15, 2016)

I remember being told we were going to learn how to diagram sentences at some point in middle school. I also remember not actually learning it after that point. 

Any of you guys remember the Shirley Method? We did that in elementary school and then it never came up again. Must've been a fad.


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## archaeoroutes (Oct 12, 2014)

I've asked around and don't know anyone of any age who knows what this is about. I guess it never hit Britain.
Can someone please explain the point of it? Not stirring, genuinely interested.


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## archaeoroutes (Oct 12, 2014)

NapCat said:


>


A bit misleading saying the Apollo missions were all calculated with a slide rule, though I do agree about the work ethic message.

Here is Margaret Hamilton with the computer code she wrote for the missions:


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

archaeoroutes said:


> I've asked around and don't know anyone of any age who knows what this is about. I guess it never hit Britain.
> Can someone please explain the point of it? Not stirring, genuinely interested.


If you click on the link Betsy provided in the first post it explains and shows it very well. Quoting a portion of the article, "It was a purely American phenomenon," Burns Florey says. "It was invented in Brooklyn, it swept across this country like crazy and became really popular for 50 or 60 years and then began to die away."


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Diagramming sentences? Yes! Loved it

Slide Rule? No.  the earliest calculators were just coming out when I started HS, by the time we got to where slide rules could be really helpful, they were even affordable. We did do estimating with logarithms but, the slide rule was practically obsolete.

Phonics/Phonetics for reading? Yes! Obviously, we were expected to just learn certain simple words and be able to read them without 'sounding them out' but we were encouraged to apply pronunciation rules to figure out what new words were, as well as look them up for definitions. 

And there were absolutely any number of words that I'd read that I had no clue how to REALLY pronounce them. I could usually figure meaning from context but was usually too lazy to look 'em up -- that would have required me stopping reading!  Hors d'oeurves is one that I was probably in HS or later before I connected it with the proper pronunciation and specifically to small portion pre-meal snacks.


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## archaeoroutes (Oct 12, 2014)

crebel said:


> If you click on the link Betsy provided in the first post it explains and shows it very well. Quoting a portion of the article, "It was a purely American phenomenon," Burns Florey says. "It was invented in Brooklyn, it swept across this country like crazy and became really popular for 50 or 60 years and then began to die away."


I did read the article, but I can't see how or what it was supposed to help. Is it for learning parts of sentences and grammar? 
Or was it to help writing? For instance, can you see at a glance from a diagram if a sentence is syntactically or grammatically incorrect, or even just clumsy?
Or was it a tool to make people think about analysing sentence structure?

Given the number of people who know a lot about teaching English that I know, I'm surprised none of them remembered it, even as 'something they do over there'.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

archaeoroutes said:


> Given the number of people who know a lot about teaching English that I know, I'm surprised none of them remembered it, even as 'something they do over there'.


Seeing as how the teachers that taught me would be at least in their late 70s or early 80s, I'm not surprised to learn English teachers "over there" (from our perspective ) might not have been teaching when it was popular here or remember it even if they were teaching then.

Betsy


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

archaeoroutes said:


> I did read the article, but I can't see how or what it was supposed to help. Is it for learning parts of sentences and grammar?
> Or was it to help writing? For instance, can you see at a glance from a diagram if a sentence is syntactically or grammatically incorrect, or even just clumsy?
> Or was it a tool to make people think about analysing sentence structure?
> 
> Given the number of people who know a lot about teaching English that I know, I'm surprised none of them remembered it, even as 'something they do over there'.


I only had the one teacher who ever referred to diagramming. It would have been in 1967-68, and I never heard about it in a class again. In fact, Mrs. Finney didn't even teach it to the whole class, just a couple of us who were bored and had our work done.

I think diagramming was almost a game for us, but it is certainly a good method of analyzing sentence structure. I'm not sure it helped to learn the different parts of grammar and structure because you really needed to already know them to put them in their proper place in the diagram. If I recall correctly, my teacher had me diagram the first sentences of every chapter of books the class was reading when I was done and everyone else was still plodding along.

Diagramming likely did change my writing for school papers and such because I would see the diagram in my head. I do think it has stuck with me through the years to the extent that I have read a sentence in a book and thought, "That would be impossible to diagram."  I haven't actually done it in years and years. It probably wouldn't be as easy now as I remember from way back ...


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## Chad Winters (Oct 28, 2008)

I hated it!!


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Loved it. There was a symmetry to it. A well-done diagram was a thing of beauty to me. It showed you knew which word was a verb or an adverb and that they were used properly. 

Also loved phonetics. I don't mind they dropped diagramming, but I think it was a sin when they stopped teaching phonetics. 

Do you remember spelling? Say the word, spell the word (properly divided into syllables), say the word again. Do that several times and the word is stuck in your head.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

We didn't do diagramming a _lot_, but I do remember we did it. My recollection as to anything I learned from it was a better understanding of when to use subjective pronouns versus objective, when to use an adjective versus an adverb, and so on -- not to mention understanding what's needed for a sentence to actually be a sentence.  Whether it's a good or bad way to learn those and related things, I couldn't say; but like learning a lot of things, it's often good to use multiple methods to teach things, so it's probably good that I was exposed to it to some degree.


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## dgrant (Feb 5, 2014)

I remember doing that, and phonetics. It actually helped me keep the rules for english grammar straight from the rules for Spanish grammar. (I wish there'd been internet available when I was younger, with some of the ESL pages there are now! The whole "which adjective order for english, i.e. why is it the big red dog instead of the red big dog?" thing was pretty confusing for a while there, and elementary schoolers are quick to mock when I got it wrong.)

I also remember General Schwarzkopf's briefing during Desert Storm: when asked a rambling, circuitous question by a reporter that was designed to make him look bad no matter how he answered it, he looked at the reporter, and answered, "I'd like to see you diagram that sentence." For all of us who'd had some of our more rambling sentences turned into our own punishment via diagramming, it was a hilarious reply.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Do you remember spelling? Say the word, spell the word (properly divided into syllables), say the word again. Do that several times and the word is stuck in your head.


Oh, yes.... Not being able to spell was not allowed in my house. Still remember my father going over my spelling homework. Over and over again. Words definitely got stuck in our heads...

Betsy


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## Sandpiper (Oct 28, 2008)

dgrant said:


> I also remember General Schwarzkopf's briefing during Desert Storm: when asked a rambling, circuitous question by a reporter that was designed to make him look bad no matter how he answered it, he looked at the reporter, and answered, "I'd like to see you diagram that sentence." For all of us who'd had some of our more rambling sentences turned into our own punishment via diagramming, it was a hilarious reply.


LOL 

Probably in junior high years, had trouble with paragraphs. Took a little while to understand one subject matter in a paragraph. Then getting paragraphs in an order that made sense. In the late '80s I worked for an attorney who had very little understanding of paragraphs. Maybe none? When I'd get a paper back from him to revise, paragraphs were always rearranged in the same order in every paper. Spelling . . . there is a well-traveled street in the Chicago area Lake Cook Road. The attorney had written the address for me -- Lakecook Road. I corrected it when I typed it. He gave it back to me to "correct" -- Lakecook Road. I said it's two words and correctly spelled that way. He said, "_I want to spell it Lakecook._"  All these years later I think there's something a secretary can indicate at the bottom of a letter that errors are the writer's, not the typist's.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Somewhere along the way I think I intuitively picked up a spelling technique which I later read about as being a methodology for spelling: words may have _two_ pronunciations: one is the way you actually say it; but the other is the way it sounds in your head while writing/typing, based on the actual spelling. 

As far as phonetics go, just try to apply any rules to:

tough
trough
though
through

Even my "spelling pronunciation" technique doesn't work for those -- you just have to know them.


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## Jane917 (Dec 29, 2009)

Count me in as one who loved diagramming sentences. I also used a slide rule, but was not an ace. In college I got into transformational grammar, which I also loved.....it rolled into a career choice of sorts for me.


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