I know this will date me like crazy....but I remember loving to diagram sentences when I was in grade school.
It was so visual and graphic.
I guess it really appealed to my creative spirit.

By the time my own children were in school the exercise of diagramming was dropped from the curriculum.

And then came texting ......

I am in awe of the Jazz Lady's thick and gorgeous platinum locks. Wow!

Sarah - thank you for this link. I have spent the last 15 minutes saying "Listen to this" to my husband, the retired HS English teacher.

yoyoban - I loved diagramming sentences, and was darned good at it! My kids looked at me as if I had two heads, and addictive habits, when I suggested they learn it and I would love to show them how.

siobahn: that hair color, just like mine I would like to add, is becoming very stylish these days. I think it has to do with the baby boomers reaching a certain level of maturity. I am noticing more and more women who are not coloring their hair.

We should all read Eats, Shoots and Leaves in honor of this day.

I could never diagram sentences. I was always bad at math too, and wonder if there is a relationship.

IF NOT NOW , WHEN ??

This is the mantra of all of us who have decided to embrace our authentic selves once and for all....on our own terms.
Let the silvering of hair begin !
I can accept it and be happy with who I am becoming.
I think society tries to shove us all into the same youth obsessed mold.
It's kind of like that painful scene when the ugly stepsisters swear their foot will fit that slipper.
It's time we all take ownership of who were really are, starting with our authentic hair color !

What? Kids don't diagram sentences anymore?!? That explains quite a bit...

I loved diagramming sentences too, and was pretty good at math; maybe there is a correlation.

I had great fun diagramming sentences, but didn't learn it until I came to the US and got in grad school.... However, I am awful at maths, so not sure there is a correlation (unless I am a mutant)...

Happy Grammar Day!

I've never even heard of 'diagramming' sentences.Can anyone please explain it to me in a very simple way? After the age of about 12 grammar seemed to disappear from the English curriculum. I think it was because the teacher we had for several years just didn't know any. The time must have been filled in with something more interesting; I remember she was a dab hand at ghost stories.
Maths was fine until we were taught by a small, very scary witch-like creature with a hacking smokers cough/death rattle. The simplest question turned ones brain into a quivering jelly of fear.

Hope this gives you some idea......it was fun, really.

Here is a link that might be useful: how diagram a sentence

I also loved diagramming sentences, as well as doing fractions, in Math. I really think there is some correlation between them, in that it makes sense to some of us. Other Math was just horrendous for me.

No, No! There can't be a relationship between diagramming sentences and math. I was a whiz at diagramming; my mother once told me there must be a mental block in my mind concerning math because no one could be that much worse in just one subject. (She was a whiz at both.)

I was good at both math and diagramming sentences. Maybe a logic component to both? Which I was also more than just competent at.

I learnt minimal grammar at school. We did the very first bit of separating subject and predicate, identifying the verb and knowing what adjectives, nouns and adverbs were. But when as an adult I went to German classes with my sister (7 years my elder and also learnt some Latin at school) I had to ask her what the object of the sentence was. She was amazed I had never learnt it (and if it had ever been mentioned, I would have remembered, because I love stuff like that!).
Diagramming has never been taught here.

Vee, didn't we used to call this "parsing" a sentence? I remember doing that. We had to write above the words in an exercise book what they were, verb, adverb etc. I was hopeless at it and arithmetic as well! I improved in maths a lot after watching Carol Vordermann, she explained things so well in the TV 'Countdown' show. Known as 'Letters and Numbers' here.
Perhaps 'diagramming' and 'parsing' is different? But just as confusing to me, no doubt! I wonder how I got a pass in the GCE 'O' level in English Grammar? Probably scraped through!

Ann, yes 'parsing' was the word, but we did little of it. I do remember in junior school underlining verbs, nouns etc in different colours. As for 'O' level English Language I think our exam board (London) had an either/or choice between grammar and ???. So we must have chosen ??? ;-)
The DH always maintains that doing Latin helped with grammar when he was older.

Oh, the diagram was so visual and linear...I just loved it!
Everything was so easily picked out of the sentence and put in the diagram where it was supposed to be, like a puzzle.

Math was not my favorite subject at all, yet I loved English and Science.

Veer, we didn't use different colors/colours, but underlined the noun/subject with one line and the verb with two lines.

Our seventh grade teacher had us write letters every week to somone. She would correct them before we mailed them. My aunt, who was my godmother, was a nun who taught Latin. I used to send her the letters without recopying them. I think I was proud of the fact that there was very little red correction to my letters.

I do think Latin, which I took for 3 years in HS, helped my vocabulary and grammar later in life (when I am not being lazy). However, I think the amount or reading I did as a child also helped a great deal.

As a teacher, I found that a good reader was always a good writer.
In other words, children who loved reading for enjoyment always seemed to have a better grasp of words and were able to write more interesting sentences, using better words and having better spelling.

In my opinion HP was the best thing that ever happened to rekindle a love of reading in kids.
Before HP, most kids thought reading was a waste of time and only for nerds or weirdos.
Then HP arrived and almost all noses were in the book!

I stand with Carolyn: there just cannot be a correlation, as I was excellent in diagramming and English vocabulary, but horrible in Math, which I hated, except for Geometry (because the latter was visual).

I had 3 years of Latin in High School and found my English vocabulary grew enormously afterward, in terms of tracing roots of so many words.

I agree about the Harry Potter books, which were a godsend to get kids interested in reading again.

I'm another who loved diagramming sentences. As someone mentioned: it was puzzle-solving, and I always enjoyed puzzles. Similarly, I adored balancing chemical equations. I liked math for the same reason, until I got to trigonometry and calculus.

As much as I like solving crossword puzzles, I've found that I enjoy Sudoku (Number Place) and Kakuro (Cross Sums) even more. It's funny to me that both types of puzzles were around for decades in American puzzle books, but they didn't take off in popularity until they were given Japanese names -- more glamorous, I suppose. I like regular, old grid-type logic problems, too, as well as those math 'word' problems...the ones with Train #1 going an average of XXmph for 700 miles and Train #2 going XXmph for 1200 miles, which one will get to Chicago in the shortest time?

Good at math. Bad at Sadoku, which I say is not math. I do like and have fun with Ken-Ken, a puzzle form similar to Sodoku. Developed by Will Shortz, it has the added component of having to add the numbers to a certain sum.

Oh, Frieda, I'm completely disillusioned with you. Having thought of you as a reading companion, I now find that you LIKE math reading problems. They were my nemesis. At home once for a visit, I remember helping my brother with his 6th grade arithmetic because he could do the reasoning but not the math and I vice versa. I am six years older than he, and I did get better at math as I got older. I can balance a mean checkbook and do our taxes, but I still don't like it.

I am another who liked maths, especially as Frieda says, the algebraic puzzles that Carolyn didn't like, and solving simultaneous equations (closely related to chemical equations). I also like sudoku and an online game called Einstein.
However, I have a very interesting dichotomy. I am good at reading maps - no need to turn them upside down *g*- BUT am absolutely useless at other types of visual problems. My sons had problems where they were given nets - representations of solid figures cut and laid out flat - and I had no idea how to do them. Similarly with 'farmer brown has a field with three trees in it, divide it into equal portions with a tree in each part' and things of that nature. I can't put wooden puzzles back together either.

Heh! Carolyn, differences sure can be peculiar. But please don't be disillusioned with me -- we can still be boon reading companions. :-)

Veronica, I agree that Sudoku puzzles are not really math; they are logic problems -- the nine numbers could be replaced easily with nine different letters and the solving aspect would be the same.

Kath, I've always liked reading maps...give me an atlas and I'll be content for hours. My father, who always did most of the driving on our family trips, had one rule he strictly enforced: at least one person besides him had to stay awake to 'ride shotgun', talking to and reading the map for him (it kept him from nodding off). My mother could talk but she was a lousy map-reader; one brother could read a map but would forget to talk; other brother could do neither very well; and then I, the youngest, could do both. I was always proud of that and the fact that daddy trusted me most. The only problem that developed for me was I cannot sleep as a passenger in a moving vehicle; I'm apprehensive that as soon as I fall asleep something bad will happen.

Daddy complimented me by saying I was part 'homing pigeon'. His training put me in good stead, because I've driven on five continents with usually no more directions than the notion that such-and-such place is north/south or east/west of wherever I am at the moment. I'm a pretty good navigator at sea, as well.

Kath, the spatial thing that gives you problems is something that perplexes me at times. Although I'm reasonably good at visualizing such things as, for example, the internal structures of crystals and can draw them (my geophysicist husband cannot), when it comes to most forms -- especially life forms -- I can't make them look realistic. My drafting ability is fine (e.g., I love to draw floor plans and elevations), but my artistic ability is practically nil.

Aren't we all curious conglomerations of abilities?!