Grammar Diagramming:

The Point?

You can start a sentence with "because."

Commas do not exist because of pauses.

I can prove it, but it's going to take some diagramming.

Diagramming a sentence is a puzzle. It's a logic game. There is only one right answer,
and when you get it right, everything fits together in a satisfying, even beautiful, way.

"Good grammar" is about formal English. It's a style, maybe even a dialect of English. It
is not right or wrong, but it is what educated, intelligent people can use when it suits them.
There is nothing wrong with a Southern person saying, "I seen that!" That's a dialect. If the
Southerner wants to get into college, though, they would be wise to drop their local dialect and
adopt the more formal style of the educated class: "I saw that."

In a way, good grammar is like wearing a suit and tie. People put on the trappings of
professionals in order to give others a good first impression, or to show that they belong, or to
feel professional. Imagine going into a bank and seeing the bank president in sweat pants and
flip flops. Not only would this feel weird to the customers, but it would feel weird to the bank
president as well. How you present yourself to the world changes not only how others react to
you, but how you act in the world as well. A suit helps you feel respectable; a suit helps you be
respected.

Grammar is the same way. You neither need a suit nor good grammar to do well in this
world. If you have good grammar, though, you have opportunities that others don't have. More
is open to you. There are lots of careers that don't use any grammar at all: that's great! There
are lots of jobs that require good writing communication skills, though, and these tend to pay
better, offer better benefits, and allow people to feel like they are doing good things in the
world. There are lots of options, and it's better to be able to choose.

The study of English is, in part, about teaching students the skill of using good grammar,
this formal English, so that they can choose the career, job, or lack thereof that suits them best.

Grammar allows students of English to understand the parts of a sentence. By

understanding the pieces, a student can learn how and why they are put together, how to
break them apart correctly, and how they can be put back together in creative ways. The point
of grammar is to build formally-correct sentences and punctuate them correctly. It is totally
pointless if it doesn't teach how to write better.
 This diagramming workbook is intended to teach how to write well using formal English.
There are no mysteries, but it's going to take a little while.

The book begins with the basics, and at first it may seem that this has nothing to do with
good writing. Trust me. When your first-grade teacher said that "A" sounds like "ah," you did
not stand up and say, "When am I ever going to use 'A'? This isn't reading!" You trusted them.
Trust me. To see how entire sentences are punctuated, I need to teach you some things that
are not strictly about punctuation. It will take a few lessons to get to our first comma. It will
take most of the book to start seeing how you already use these grammatical structures and
never knew it. As you reach the end of the book, though, sentences will look new to you.

For many, you have been painting without seeing the colors; you have been writing
without knowing what grammar you were using. Commas have been a mystery for you. You've
been taking good guesses, and you have a sense of what works, but you have no idea of why. I
hope that this book and its exercises will allow you to see.

These 47 or so exercises are not meant to be a textbook of everything about grammar.

They are meant to cover some of the most important concepts that will quickly improve your
writing.

If I wanted to sum up this whole explanation and reduce it to it's most succinct, I would
just write this:

Why Diagramming?

1. To write better:
a. to learn a common vocabulary so that you, I, and your peers can talk
about mistakes and their solutions.
b. to learn the pieces of sentence so that you know with what you're
working

2. It's awesome.