"It's a fairly simple idea," says Kitty Burns Florey, the author of Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences. "I like to call it a picture of language.

For example, a series of short simple sentences used together may be used to create tension, as in this extract: 'We rounded the corner. He was there. We stood in awe at the sight.' ...

Kitty Burns Florey explores a lost art in Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog, subtitled "The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences." Once used to teach grammar, the practice has fallen ...

For a long time, sentence diagramming flourished throughout the American school system, and, despite being condemned as a useless waste of time in the 1970s, it still persists in many schools ...

I read an article last month about the lost art of diagramming sentences, a once-required skill that many American children had to master if they wanted to pass English back in the mid-20th century.

For example, a series of short simple sentences used together may be used to create tension, as in this extract: 'We rounded the corner. He was there. We stood in awe at the sight.' ...

"It's a fairly simple idea," says Kitty Burns Florey, the author of Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences. "I like to call it a picture of language.