Nevertheless, diagramming sentences is still taught — you can find it in textbooks and see it in lesson plans. My question is, why? Burns Florey says it might still be a good tool for some students.

A diagrammer simply diagrams. I didn’t have a clue about what to do with the question that ends it. Otherwise, in its mice chase cats way, the sentence is perfectly diagrammable.

Sentence diagramming was once a widespread technique for teaching kids how to analyze the structure of a sentence. If you had to do it in school, you either loved it or you hated it. Most kids ...