Sentence diagramming is the long division of English. It involves a bewildering array of lines and diagonal branches. It is loathed as an elementary school chore. And it is presumed to be obsolete.

In her small classroom at Gaithersburg High School, English teacher Robyn Jackson draws a complicated pattern of horizontal and diagonal lines on the blackboard. Her students bend over their notebooks ...

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 hated ...

The writer Stephen King pushes people who want to write well to "read, read, read." Reading a wide variety of writing can feel like riding waves of language: words, sentences, paragraphs — all of ...

Say “sentence diagramming” to people of a certain age, and you get reactions ranging from, “Oh, I was really good at that in eighth grade,” to “Mrs. Green made us diagram The Rime of the Ancient ...

Ever wondered what makes action movies — often cheesy and grandiose — timeless favorites? Aside from the weapons and explosions, dialogue probably plays a larger role than most think. And like books, ...

The Dori Monson Show is on KIRO Newsradio (weekdays Noon-3). Dori needs some help from any listeners who are English majors and grammar enthusiasts. Seattle City Councilmember Mike O’Brien recently ...