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Quote of the Day: Gertrude Stein on Diagramming Sentences
I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences.
— Gertrude Stein
Being able to diagram sentences is like being able to read music: many people will think your skill useless, but it can add incredible value to your appreciation and love of the beautiful.
I love language. I love the construction, the usage, the etymology, the comparisons. I like to learn languages — I’ve studied French, German, Japanese, Latin, and am currently learning Spanish, Italian, and Catalan on Duolingo.
One of the things I find deeply exciting, like Gertrude Stein, is how the language hangs together, how the sentence structure can, like the structure of great architecture, support something meaningful.
Grammar can be beautiful, it can be innovative, it can help us frame our thoughts more clearly. For a writer like Stein, clearly, diagramming sentences allowed her to get deeply into the heart of the language as she wrestled with the most effective way to communicate her thoughts.
My teachers in grammar school (parochial school from kindergarten through 8th grade), Dominican nuns, loved diagramming sentences. We all stood at the chalkboard, parsing and laying out the bones of sentences like a fun game.
When I am driving around or hiking or out in a boat, I like to be able to have a mental map of where I am in the geography of the place. Similarly, I grasp the grammar of the sentence by forming a mental picture of the diagram. The diagram helps me travel true, as it were.
In my homeschool, I use a wonderful book in the ninth-grade English course called Grammar by Diagram: Understanding English Grammar Through Traditional Sentence Diagramming, by Cindy Vitto. We have the second edition, but I understand that a third is out. I cannot recommend this book highly enough if you want to study grammar. The book is interesting, well-laid out, methodical. The sentence examples are interesting. There is a complete answer key in the back of the book.
Usually, my students (I’m on my sixth and final student) find it a little tedious at the beginning but then find that they really enjoy the entire process. So far, they all agree that it is one of the best texts they used in their homeschool days.
The back cover of the text is adorned with the Gertrude Stein quote that inspired this essay.
Did you study grammar in your school days? Did you diagram sentences? Did you like it? Have your children studied grammar?
This is part of the February 2023 Quote of the Day Group Writing project. Sign up here.
Published in Group Writing
I remember our (sadistic) English teacher having Good Old Grammar days. Don’t remember diagramming sentences….I feel robbed!
Looking into getting the Grammar by Diagram book, and the 3rd addition is $89! The 2nd edition is $45, so I wonder how necessary it is to use the new edition. Is it so expensive because it’s a book and workbook? I see that there’s also a separate workbook. I’d appreciate your thoughts. We do not homeschool, but our girls love to write.
Here’s a fun statement off the wikipedia page on grammatical cases:
“As a language evolves, cases can merge (for instance, in Ancient Greek, the locative case merged with the dative case), a phenomenon officially called syncretism.[4]“
I sure wish I could state, “Well of course I knew that!” Only I have no clue what so ever as to what the statement means.
I’ve used a single second edition for six students in succession. We do not write in the text but use notebooks and our chalkboard, and do many exercises orally. Someone else could use it after us; it’s in quite good shape. We’ve never used a workbook and I can’t speak at all about the third edition, which I’ve never seen.
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They have items that the Goodwills across the USA have inventoried, and if something is available, often it is priced at rock bottom prices.
Thanks for the tip! I am trying to break my book buying habit, so I’ll also see what the library has to offer.
@mamatoad, once your last child is educated, you have a very lucrative career ahead of you, as a home-schooling consultant. I would guess that the demand is huge, and you could make a lot of money helping others avoid the government schools for their children. If you recommend particular materials, the companies which distribute those materials might pay you.