Scribd
Upload
12 views

Diagramming-Sentences

DiagrAmming

Uploaded by

partingmalikse31
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
12 views

Diagramming-Sentences

DiagrAmming

Uploaded by

partingmalikse31
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 3

Diagramming Sentences

A sentence diagram is a visual representation of a sentence’s structure and its words’ functions. When doing this exercise,
you put each word in its respective place within the diagram, which uses lines to represent which words relate to each other and
how. With practice, this skill of breaking down and diagramming a sentence will not only help you understand the underlying
principles of sentence structure but also help keep your writing mistake-free.

What is a sentence diagram?


A sentence diagram is a visual organization system that you can use to see how the parts of speech like nouns, verbs,
prepositions, and articles work together and relate to each other in any given sentence.
The most commonly used method is known as the Reed–Kellogg system.

What grammatical components you should be able to identify before diagramming?


Before we get down to actually diagramming sentences, let’s review the technical elements that sentences are composed
of: parts of speech and sentence constituents. Sentence diagramming deals heavily with the functions of words, and you need to
identify each word or phrase’s role so you know where to put it on your sentence diagram.
You might recognize some of these are parts of speech like articles and conjunctions, but others are concepts that describe
the constituents of a sentence like predicates or subordinate clauses. Constituents can be a single word or a collection of words that
form a single function.

Subject noun or noun form: The subject is the doer of the action in a sentence.
Predicate verb: The predicate specifies the complete action of the sentence, and at its center is the predicate verb.
Direct object: The direct object is the noun that receives the action.
Indirect object: The indirect object is the noun that receives the direct object.
Preposition: Prepositions such as in, at, to, or behind show relationships like direction, time, location, and space.
Modifier: Modifiers, like adjectives and adverbs, add more description to nouns, verbs, or other modifiers. Possessive
nouns like my, your, or Mom’s act as adjectives, so they’re also considered modifiers.
Article: Articles are also a kind of modifier, and they define a noun as either specific (the) or unspecific (a, an).
Appositive: An appositive is a noun or noun phrase and is a special kind of modifying component. Appositives further
identify or even rename another noun for descriptive purposes.
Conjunction: Conjunctions like and, but, and or join words or phrases together.
Subordinate clauses: Subordinate clauses contain a subject and a predicate but need to join an independent clause to form
a complete sentence. These can include both noun clauses and infinitive clauses.
Gerund: Gerunds are verbs that act as nouns, using the participle or –ing form.

How to diagram a sentence in 5 steps

To show you how to diagram a sentence, let’s start with simple sentences and work up to more advanced constructions. For
this section, we’ll use the example sentence:

The dog brought me his old ball in the morning.

1. Diagram the subject noun and main predicate verb first


The subject and main verb are the core of all sentence diagrams, so start there. Begin by drawing a long horizontal line (the
“base line”) below the sentence and then draw a short vertical line down the middle of the horizontal one. The subject noun, dog,
goes on the left side and the verb, brought, goes on the right side.
Auxiliary verbs that are necessary to form different tenses (like have or will) are written together with the main
verb. This also includes modal verbs like might or can.

2. Add the direct object


The direct object, ball, goes on the base line after the verb. The verb and the direct object are separated by another vertical
line that sits on top of the base line and does not pass through it.
3. Then add the indirect objects
Indirect objects (in this example: me) go on a small horizontal line under the verb, connected by a diagonal line.

4. Put the prepositions in place

For a prepositional phrase like in the morning, draw a small horizontal line under the word it modifies and connect it with a
diagonal line. In this case, in the morning refers to the time that the action took place, so the horizontal line would go under the
verb brought. Then write the preposition (in) on the diagonal line and the preposition’s object (morning) on the horizontal line.

5. Finally, add the modifiers and articles

Place modifiers and articles on diagonal lines beneath the words they describe.

You might also like