Love to Your Gramma[r]

[rubah]

The last two days have been spent in sentence diagramming in AP Lit because apparently none of the other people taking the class knows the least bit about grammar.

I have been awed at sentence diagramming ever since I read Little Town on the Prairie, where Laura has to diagram a sentence to pass her teacher's examination, and it completely blew my mind..

Anyways, this evening, I wished to construct a sentence and attempt to diagram it for your entertainment. Sadly, I make more complex sentences than I can diagram with all impunity, so there may be significant errors in this document.

However, I present this to you now:


I will bestow a fleeting happiness on the one who can recreate the original sentence (PROTIP: Once is capitalized, I swear).

(SPOILER)I had thought to keep the words undefined, because that's most of the challenge, but knowing my handwriting, and the quality of the scan, I thought I'd make it a little easier, so, here, left to right, going down by rows, is a word bank.

man came
a strange once when up to
me
I went walking
talking made think me
his back to
day
a ago
long
so
(that) I could remember way
not the
(that) I got there

[Shiny]

I remembered having to do this during 8th grade and I hated it. Your diagram looks like it's up to par though.

[Nominus Experse]

If this was ever taught in the schools I attended, I must have refused to participate because I've never seen such a thing.

And quite frankly, I don't care to ever map out a sentence in such a way.

[Raistlin]

... wtf?

I've taken and done well on the AP Lit and AP Language exams, but I've never seen such a thing.

[oddler]

If this was ever taught in the schools I attended, I must have refused to participate because I've never seen such a thing.

And quite frankly, I don't care to ever map out a sentence in such a way.

[Dr Unne]

What in the world is that? Besides terrifying. Long have I been parsing sentences and never have I seen such horrors.

[Momiji]

... wtf?

I've taken and done well on the AP Lit and AP Language exams, but I've never seen such a thing.

I REMEMBER DOING THAT IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL! Fortunately, it isn't in AP curriculum ^^

[Tavrobel]

There's too many errors in your sentence diagram to recreate it properly.
After some closer inspection, it's not really erroneous, it's just full of notation that is not traditionally used (but some of it is either error or a slight nuance that was missed).

However, it should read something like this:

A strong man once came up to me when I went walking
(or, "Once, a strong man...")
and
his talking made me think back
to a day long ago, so that (or so long ago that)
I could not remember
the way I got there.

Why I retained this information since sixth grade is beyond me.

[XxSephirothxX]

I think diagramming sentences is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever had to do in an English class. There are better way to learn grammar, and while I am a bit ashamed and disappointed that I cannot, off the top of my head, label each and every part of a sentence, I can live with it. I can write without making many grammatical blunders, and that is good enough for me.

[Martyr]

I almost flunked a couple of my elementary english classes because of this. It actually reversed my education. I probably had to read a novel for every one of these damn things I worked out in order to restore my literacy.

I won;'t even look at that, and I implore you to burn it.

[Xaven]

Sentence diagramming was retardedly easy in 9th grade. The honors English class had to do them. It makes me laugh to remember all the people who didn't get it. :D

I like the lines for gerunds. Edit: And infinitives.

[Disco Potato]

I used to wish we covered more grammar stuff in AP Lit. I take it back...

[Araciel]

never heardof this before in my short years.

[Moon Rabbits]

Is it okay that I have no smurfing clue what you're on about?

Oh, and grammar is [sic].

[Resha]

I have no idea what "sentence diagramming" is all about. o_o Never ever had to do it in all my years of English lessons or otherwise; how does it work? Because I really don't understand the diagram o_O

Edit: Once when I went walking, a strange man came up to me. His talking made me think back to a day so long ago that I could not remember the way I got there. (wherever you are when the said strange man comes up to you, I guess? but it doesn't entirely make sense...)