How to Diagram a Sentence

Ask your parents or grandparents if they know how to diagram sentences. Chances are they have heard of it and perhaps even done it themselves. Although schools don't teach students how to diagram sentences anymore, the technique is an effective tool for teaching grammar. Once you know how to diagram a sentence, you might even think it's fun.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Pick out the verb and subject of the verb in a simple sentence. You can locate the subject by asking "who" or "what" is engaging in an action that the verb describes. Draw a horizontal line underneath the subject and a vertical line between them. Have the vertical line cut through and extend just beyond the underline.

2. Locate the direct object in the sentence. Add another vertical line, this time to the right of the verb, and place the direct object after that line. You should now have three words: the subject, the verb and the direct object, underlined and separated by vertical lines.

3. Take articles, mainly "the," "a," and "an," and possessives, and place these on slanted lines drawn from and extending below the underline, or base line. Make sure they are below the words they are describing. For example, in the sentence "The boy walked to his red school", "the" would be placed below "boy" and "his" below "school."

4. Identify modifiers such as adverbs and adjectives. Put the words that the adverbs and adjectives are linked to on slanted lines directly below those words as you did for the articles and possessives; for instance, "The boy walked to his red school," the word "red" would be placed below the word "school", beside "his."

5. Place prepositional phrases beneath the modifiers. Draw a horizontal line from the end of the last slanted line, beneath the word the prepositional phrase refers to. Put prepositional phrases on slanted lines beneath that horizontal line. For example, "The boy walked to his red school on Main Avenue," "on Main Avenue" would be added below "his red" beneath the word "school."

6. Put nouns of direct address such as names being referred to or expletives like "Look!" or "Hey!" on horizontal lines placed one over the other above the subject. For example, in the sentence, "Look! Joe and Jane are leaving!" the words "look," "Joe" and "Jane" would be placed on lines over the unwritten but understood subject, being the person talking and written as "(you)."

Resources

• View some diagramming examples at the Lifestream website.

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