Diagramming Sentences

This is the weekend of the annual retreat--designed, planned, and led by the members of the Saturday writing group!

My contribution? I've been asked to do a refresher course on diagramming sentences--as we used to do in seventh grade.

People either loved it or hated it back then, but it was standard fare for teaching sentence structure.  To me, it was drudgery to take a boring sentence and put the words on the right lines.  But then one day, Carlene sat me down and told me it was like a game, so I decided to play.  That was a smart move, Carlene!  (Besides, I had a terrible crush on the English teacher, Mr. Lord--and I figure it helped to impress him.)

Mr. Lord, good lord!  What was I thinking?  Oh, how I cried when I heard he had a girlfriend and I didn't have a chance!

Anyway, it's been a long time and I'm rusty on diagramming sentences, so I'm reviewing it.
I just found a site that will diagram any sentence you throw at it:

http://1aiway.com/nlp4net/services/enparser/

If anyone wants to brush up on making lines and rockets, you can go here and they will show you how.

Building good sentences is like building a good piece of furniture.  Diagramming them is a tool for knowing what goes where and why.  Once you learn it, it never leaves you.  It gets embedded in your brain. Forever after, you understand how to make tighter joints, oil up the surfaces, and sand off the rough edges.

When I used to teach Freshman Comp, I marveled at the impossible combinations of words that some students called sentences.  From time to time, I'd show them a diagram and watch their eyes glaze over--just like mine did in trigonometry.