Fifty-two Words, One Diagram

For some reason, nothing will do today but to pick up this image of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution “diagrammed,” found on the delightful Separated by a Common Language blog, and originally from Hartford’s own Capital Community College Foundation.

No, I never had to learn how to diagram a sentence in school. And this approach to analyzing sentence structure and grammar was unknown in the eighteenth century. But the formal prose of that era required long, complex, cascading sentences, and diagramming can help show how those sentences make sense.

Eugene Montoux has diagrammed an even longer and more complex sentence—the opening of the Declaration of Independence—as well as several Amendments.