In this illustrated personal history, Kitty Burns Florey explores the rise and fall of sentence diagramming, including its invention by a mustachioed man named Brainerd Brainy' Kellogg and his wealthy accomplice Alonzo Reed - the inferior 'balloon diagram' predecessor - and what diagrams of sentences by Hemingway, Welty, Proust, Kerouac and other famous writers reveal about them. Florey also answers some of literature's most pressing questions: Was Mark Twain or James Fenimore Cooper a better grammarian? What are the silliest grammar rules?'
About the book
In this illustrated personal history, Kitty Burns Florey explores the rise and fall of sentence diagramming, including its invention by a mustachioed man named Brainerd Brainy' Kellogg and his wealthy accomplice Alonzo Reed - the inferior 'balloon diagram' predecessor - and what diagrams of sentences by Hemingway, Welty, Proust, Kerouac and other famous writers reveal about them. Florey also answers some of literature's most pressing questions: Was Mark Twain or James Fenimore Cooper a better grammarian? What are the silliest grammar rules?'