Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences

From its awkward beginnings (text enclosed by balloons) to something resembling what's seen on the cover, minus the dog (which does not appear to be barking), Kitty Burns Florey provides the reader with a brief, engaging story of the diagramming of sentences. And yes, it's worth reading, and not just for those of us who would have been among the last, in the 1960s, of the multitudes to have been taught this material. I never saw the sense of it at the time, and I don't recall any teachers every trying to explain its value to us. We just had to do it. I'm among those who promptly forgot all of it.Anecdotes about Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald, George Orwell, and Monty Python find places in this little book, but the focus remains on sentence diagrams and sentence diagramming. Along the way Florey entertains such questions as whether or not this skill creates better writers, and how ale differs from beer (I agree with her on the first one).Does it make you a better writer? Nope. Can it help enhance your understanding of grammar and how it works? I think so. Does this book provide enjoyable background for it subject? Yes, and very much so. Highly recommended.

Anyone who has had experience with the practice of diagramming sentences in grade school and actually enjoyed that activity will love this book. The book not only tells the history of the art and practice of sentence diagramming, but serves as a review for the person who wishes to brush up on skills untested for decades. This book instructs as much as it informs and delights.

It's wonderful to meet, though just through writing, someone who had as much fun diagramming sentences as I did. If only she had enjoyed parsing sentences and conjugating verbs as much :-). The author had excellent control of her material as she went through her memories, the history of the diagrams and the delightfully convoluted sentences from a variety of writers. Only twice did I want to question her. First, for her definition of parsing which left out all the fun - mood, tense, person, number; second, for her dismissal of the tree diagrams used by linguists where she ignored their main advantage - going down to the smallest level of meaning e.g. -ed noted as a past tense marked on walked. Moving past the nit-picking, which as a copy editor the author implied she would enjoy, I only became bored/willing to set the book down in the final chapter - the "survey" of the use of diagramming in today's classrooms and what diagramming actually teaches one.I definately recommend this book to anyone who loved to diagram sentences.

Ms. Florey has written a very light but moderately charming little book recalling her youth, misspent diagramming sentences in her local parochial school. I heard a review of "Sister Bernadette" on NPR in which the reader-reviewer made it sound interesting but, sadly, I did not find it particularly so. In reading Ms. Florey's work, I frequently found myself imagining her as a sixth grader and remembering girls in my own sixth grade class who were neurotically concerned with keep their work neat and precise and I realized that had I known Ms. Florey I would have found her just as boring and annoying as I found them.I knew from having read the reviews on this Amazon site that Ms. Florey's book was not going to impart any real or useful understanding of sentence diagramming and indeed it did not. If anything, I came away even more mystified than ever.The author admits diagramming is irrelevant. So, really, is this book. I gave it three stars because I really did enjoy Ms. Florey's insightful and humorous discussion of Gertrude Stein. I also appreciated the interesting bits of trivia and arcana.I use three basic questions or criteria to determine the artistic value of a thing: What was the author/director/composer trying to accomplish? Did she/he succeed? Was the book/movie/music worth doing? I suppose Ms. Florey was interested in writing a little book about happier childhood moments and a world which exists no longer using the lost art of sentence diagramming as a framework for her memories and musings. And yes, she has succeeded in dragging us down memory lane and I could almost hear the chalk on the blackboard so I would say her evocation was successful. But was this book worth writing? Not really.

Nice history and (for my ten year-old son) excellent examples that will serve as problems when doing more advanced diagramming. After reading the book, I realized that diagramming is just one of the tools (required to be used when I was a student) that lead to better understanding of good writing but doesn't guarantee the goodness (or even the correctness) of that writing. In any case, my son is still being requested to identify subjects, predicates, direct objects, etc. As a tool, diagramming will aid him in identifying these parts of a sentence.

Diagraming sentences is a lost art. However, if you can diagram, you will avoid most grammatical errors. Hooray for this book!

You don't have to be a grammar nerd to enjoy this book. It's is a terrific read, so much fun, and it kills me that they're not teaching sentence diagramming any more. Sentence diagramming is one reason that as an adult, I am a decent writer, especially when it comes to avoiding misplaced modifiers (my pet peeve).