I write a daily political blog. It helps to have diagrammed sentences.
Today's blog post is a respite from politics. Instead, it is a post about writing a blog about politics.
I want to express my gratitude to my eighth-grade English teacher, Ray Lewis. We learn our native language's grammar rules without understanding what we know. Mr. Lewis gave me the names and reason for what sounded right in the grammar-voice in my head.
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| From Gettysburg Address |
Diagramming sentences was standard educational practice in the early 20th century, but was near the end of its run by my Junior High School era. Most students hated it and educators were concluding that diagramming didn't teach sentence structure. It only taught people how to do something useless in itself--to diagram sentences. The growing theory was that students learned to write better by writing, not diagramming. If a reader remembers diagramming as useless tedium and wants justification for hating it, read this: Click: The Atlantic. "The wrong way to teach grammar."
My strongest memory about diagramming was that when facing a complex sentence, the first thing to do was to discard all the phrases and meanderings. Find the central action of the sentence: Subject and verb, and maybe object. Example: Boy throws ball. Descriptions of the boy and the ball and how he threw it were all secondary add-ons.
Mr. Lewis and diagramming sentences came strongly to mind yesterday when I considered this sentence, which appeared in Rick Millward's Guest Post yesterday.
"Overcoming what are basically fatalistic, or what some call "realist", attitudes requires an enormous a leap of faith and a commitment to optimism that seems naive in these times, but completely necessary if we are to survive as a species."
We will get back to that sentence in a moment.
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| Ray Lewis, 1962 |
Diagramming sentences was commonly taught in the eighth grade. Let me stop my story again to make another grammar point. Notice that in the first paragraph of this post I wrote "eighth-grade" with a hyphen, but in the sentence just above I wrote "eight grade" with no hyphen. What's going on?
As my eighth-grade teacher explained, when an adjective and a noun are a single unit, acting as an adjective, they take the hyphen. ("What kind of teacher was it? An eighth-grade teacher.") Eighth-grade is a unit, together modifying the word teacher.) But when I wrote that diagramming is taught in the eighth grade, eighth is the adjective modifying grade, a noun that could stand alone. (When is it taught? In a grade. Which grade? Eighth grade.) There are two parts of speech and not a unit. No hyphen.
Is there a grammatical error in Rick Millward's quoted sentence?
The sentence is long and there is a tricky spot: "attitudes requires." That sounds wrong, especially if read aloud. After all, attitudes are plural, so it needs a plural form of the verb--require-- and the words are adjacent. Are you sure that require wouldn't be better?
That brings me back to Mr. Lewis. Establish what word is the subject, which the verb. The subject of that sentence is overcoming, not attitudes, and it is singular. Attitudes is the object, not the subject. That gets clear when one thinks of it as a diagramming problem and simplifies the sentence to its barest. "Overcoming requires leap." Subject, verb, object. Everything else dangles off that core.
Thank you, Mr. Lewis. Thanks, too, to Tam Moore, the journalist who wrote a Guest Post last week. He regularly sends me a list of grammar and proofreading errors he finds in my posts, and I can usually correct them before the posts get sent out as an email. He is good that that job, even on complex sentences like Millward's. His observation as a journalist was that the sentence was too long and complex, though grammatical. The goal in journalism is clear communication. Short sentences are better.
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14 comments:
I look upon my days in NYC public schools when I learned diagraming a sentence, and geometric proofs, and the intricacies of French grammar, as very valuable to my adult life, when none of this knowledge was ever practically of use. All taught me to respect knowledge. All taught me that tools were available for me to figure out complex problems. All taught me to enjoy different types of puzzles. All taught me, that even if I were not a book editor, or mathematician or scientist or State Dept translator; that those performing that work had learned a discipline, that was of value and that deserved respect.
In these times of alternative facts, distrust of science and of academic elites; perhaps young brains would benefit from learning arcane rules which open up their minds to the possibilities that come from learning and mastering a discipline.
I also learned how to diagram sentences in the NYC public schools. In my case that was in grade school in the 1950s. I found it very interesting and really enjoyed it.
Later on, in computer science graduate school in the 1970s, that experience turned out to be quite valuable as I worked in “natural language processing,“ which at that time was a branch of artificial intelligence based on analyzing spoken sentences via a grammar analysis that was very similar to diagramming sentences.
Take the sentence, “John saw Mary in the park with a telescope.“ There are three possible sentence diagrams: John looked through a telescope and saw Mary in the park, Mary had a telescope when John saw her in the park, the park that has a telescope is where John saw Mary.
At the moment, topics like this (and algebra, among others) are being deemphasized out of a concern for “equity.” Taken to its logical conclusion, we may eventually see high school diplomas automatically handed out with birth certificates. China, meanwhile, will continue to maintain high standards and produce graduates who actually know something.
When I was a judge I sometimes diagrammed sentences in statutes to understand what the statute said. I found the exercise helpful.
As a young person I heard people of my age now discussing "the good old days" including aspects of their education. My mother's and father's handwriting, learned in a small Tennessee classroom, was beautiful and highly readable. They were proud of that skill learned in "the good old days."
Now, we're doing it, too, celebrating a skill from "the good old days."
It's interesting that if one has a grammatical foundation one develops a "gut feel" for whether a sentence is reading correctly. It's not always foolproof, but there is a visceral component. Clearly the result of Pavlovian conditioning, and of course, the beatings.
I like the occasional long sentence, usually the result of a "stream of consciousness" thought process. They have their own music.
I love this post. I thought sentence diagramming was so much fun and even better when I studied transformational grammar in college. Nerdland was my home. Thanks, Peter.
Jackie Schad
Grammar is important to make meaning; otherwise the utterance or writing can approach word salad. Writing requires greater focus on the rules. In spoken language, there’s the opportunity to correct misunderstandings and errors in real time. In writing, not so much.
There is still one grammar error remaining in the sentence: too many articles, in “...requires an enormous a leap of faith....” Only one article is permitted per noun.
I’m glad that some readers care, in any case. Not to forget the writer’s actual point...
Mike Drayton
I got mine in 7th grade. I still have PTSD.
It’s interesting that your blog on grammar generated more response than the one on Critical Race Theory, especially in light of Juneteenth coming this Saturday – something we wouldn’t have heard of except for CRT.
Most Americans probably think the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves. In fact, it only freed the slaves in the Confederacy, and even those only in theory because we were still at war. It was years later, on Juneteenth 1865, that word of the proclamation reached Galveston, Texas, and not until December that the 13th Amendment finally freed those enslaved in the North and in border states. Then began a reign of terror that lasted another hundred years.
The Declaration of Independence says that “all men are created equal” and that they have a God-given right to “Liberty.” The treatment of people of African descent exposes the monumental hypocrisy of what the U.S. claimed to be. People who don't like facing such facts will naturally be offended by CRT. I think Leonard Pitts' column today made a good case for exposing the truth anyway.
There goes the state. “Equity” over competence…
Oregon students shouldn’t have to prove they can write or do math to get a diploma, lawmakers decide
I also taught diagramming in 1961, 1962 in Language Arts to students at University Heights Jr. High, Riverside California my first teaching job. It was fun to draw on the black board very straight lines with chalk and a yard stick.. In those days if a kid forgot his book , or pencil, or paper I could send him to the vice-principal for a three hit paddling. Afterward , all my students brought their books, pencils, and paper. No complaints or whining. No pizza parties and attaboys. Nothing but yes, sir , no sir. Did they learn how to write better sentences? They wrote and punctuated and could at least read sentences from a text book. An accomplishment far beyond the students I taught in 2002. Good to hit students? Not necessarily. But fear is a great motivator. Teachers now are experts at encouragement , manipulation , and designing curriculum aimed at the bottom half of the class. Lots of “good job”.
I can still diagram a sentence. I tried teaching it in 2000 to no avail. Most students did NOT know parts of speech OR CARED TO KNOW. The End.( lots of incomplete sentences in this email. WHO CARES?)
Ralph
Sent from my iPad
Meanwhile, China targeting the top half of the class. Who do you think will produce better engineers?
Excellent meander through our common education in the 50s and 60s taught on opposite coasts. Phil Arnold's comment is all the more relevant on this day as the marginally literate members of the Oregon legislature removed the high school graduation requirement for language and mathematic competence at any level.
Ray Lewis was the best teacher I had in 12 years of Medford public schools, 8th grade, Hedrick. He didn’t do it with beatings; he did it with wit and humor and laughter, so much laughter, though he didn’t back off diagramming.
Kids adored him. My mother said you always knew when he was in front of he school before classes, because he would be surrounded by a large circle of them.
Replying to Michael
Diplomas are being handed out to seniors this year under the pretext that CoVid restrictions made learning and mastery difficult. We should penalize students so impacted by withholding a diploma. That action degrades the value of the high school diploma further.
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