A Picture of Language: The Fading Art of Diagramming Sentences | NPR

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.

Once a popular way to teach grammar, the practice of diagramming sentences has fallen out of favor.

When you think about a sentence, you usually think about words — not lines. But sentence diagramming brings geometry into grammar.

If you weren’t taught to diagram a sentence, this might sound a little zany. But the practice has a long — and controversial — history in U.S. schools.

And while it was once commonplace, many people today don’t even know what it is.

Learn more here: A Picture of Language: The Fading Art of Diagramming Sentences | NPR

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