Getting mental about sentence diagramming

Gregg Bell

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I can't seem to figure out how to punctuate some sentences because, for instance in the below sentence, I can't figure out if the underlined is a compound direct object or if what's italicized is just an independent clause. So the question would be, if it's the former there would be no comma between "known" and "and." If it's the latter, there would be a comma there. Help!

What's happened is, through the years, the Chicago Police Department has gotten better at dealing with them, so they moved out here where they're less well known and the local police departments are small and ill-equipped.

Here's another one that has me confused:

It made the closing seamless and that's what clients wanted, and what got Ike referrals.

^ Comma after "seamless" or not?

PS. Anybody know of an online site where you can just type a sentence and it will diagram it for you?
 
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Caveat -- I have never done sentence diagrams, because I didn't take AP English (who has the money for that?) and I'm a pretty strong descriptivist.

I wouldn't put the comma in your first sentence. Adding the comma feels Overly Formal and Stuffy. But also that is a REALLY long sentence. Also I assume the "them" the Chicago PD are dealing with isn't the same "they" that's moving out here...but now that I write that, I think maybe they're the same they/thems? I honestly can't tell if the PD moved to somewhere else or the (bad guys?) moved. Context might help but also having it not be one huge sentence would, too.

I'm split on having the comma in your second sentence lol. But I am more concerned with "flow" and pacing than I am with being 100% "correct." I'd need to see that sentence in context with others to see the vibe/flavor of what you're going for.

There's probably A site that diagrams the sentences but...computers are not that smart. The reason why I love language (and I'm not a great programmer) is because words, grammar, and punctuation all exist in various shades of grey while computers can only see things in black and white. Even in English, people can't agree upon how to use certain things, so thee's all those different manuals of style. I mean, this exists in programming, too, you don't NEED semicolons in JS, but I HAVE to say "let var = value" or the like, I can't say "var equals value" even though, to your squishy meat brain, it means the same thing. A computer, at best, is going to really struggle with diagramming a longer sentence.

Also what would diagramming a sentence even accomplish? There's no objectively 100% correct way 2 English, and that's not going to find it for you, because it doesn't exist.
 
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Never heard of a sentence diagrams in English* (I wasn't taught punctuation that way) but I have some thoughts on fixing the first sentence.

(*I've heard of teachers making students do that in Latin but only in the context of "this is a really terrible way to teach Latin")

What's happened is, through the years, the Chicago Police Department has gotten better at dealing with them, so they moved out here where they're less well known and the local police departments are small and ill-equipped.

That's an extremely clunky sentence to begin with. There are also two ideas mashed together in the underlined bit: 1. they moved out where they're less well known and 2. the local police departments are small and ill-equipped. I think the issue with it isn't the punctuation but that you're trying to cram too many things into one sentence. To fix that, you can make it into two sentences.

You also don't need the "what's happened is" - if I was going to start a sentence with that, I'd go for "what's happened is this:" then whatever follows the colon can be a main clause/complete sentence in its own right. Although for a sentence that's already suffering from clunkiness, removing unnecessary bits usually starts to help make it less clunky.

I would suggest something like this:

Through the years, the Chicago Police Department has gotten better at dealing with them, so they moved to (name of place). Here, they're less well known and in addition, the local police departments are small and ill-equipped.

There are other ways to make what you've got into two sentences. Exactly how you fix it would depend on what points you want to emphasise.

Generally speaking, if I'm struggling to punctuate a sentence I look at what's wrong with the sentence rather than what's wrong with the punctuation.

Here's another one that has me confused:

It made the closing seamless and that's what clients wanted, and what got Ike referrals.

You don't have to have a comma here if you don't want one. Commas aren't always a case of you have to have one versus you cannot have one. Sometimes it's optional. Consider whether the comma makes the sentence clearer or not, or if it breaks up a longer sentence.
 
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Chris P

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Just my taste is to leave it how you have it, although it certainly could be split into two sentences.

We diagramed sentences in middle school, the teachers admitting we will NEVER actually do this in real life. The point was to get us thinking about how to construct a sentence, illustrate the logic of syntax, and if you couldn't connect every part of the sentence to the diagram the sentence had a fatal error. I'm not sure if it helped, but then again maybe it did.
 
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I'm old enough to have been taught sentence diagrams in two languages. I don't find the skill remotely useful and I don't think you need to be able to diagram to determine what role in the sentence a particular phrase fulfills.

While there are work-arounds (and I fully approve of work-arounds) like making it into two sentences or rephrasing to remove your doubt in how to punctuate, I'm going to address your questions as if there were a compelling reason to retain the wording just as it stands. For the record, if this were mine to change, I would. I'm less than enthusiastic about how these sentences are put together.

What's happened is, through the years, the Chicago Police Department has gotten better at dealing with them, so they moved out here where they're less well known and the local police departments are small and ill-equipped.

No comma between here and where. There is no comma rule that indicates the need. It may help you to create a shorter, simpler sentence with the same construction, which may make it more obvious that no comma is needed.

Chicago criminals moved where they're less well known and the police are underfunded.

You wouldn't put a comma in that one, right? Your original sentence is pretty much the same thing.

It made the closing seamless and that's what clients wanted, and what got Ike referrals.

Again, no comma needs to be here, although an editor would not fault you for inserting one. More likely, though, an editor would want you to rephrase that, removing one and, inserting an emdash, or turning it into two sentences. It's ungainly as it stands.

It sounds to me like you really need to master the rules for comma usage and identifying parts of a sentence's structure, not find a website that can do it for you. Knowing this stuff is part of a writer's tool kit.

If it's in your budget, find yourself a good grammar book aimed at college students or higher. I'm a fan of The St. Martin’s Handbook. When there's a new (and fairly expensive) edition, the previous edition gets cheap. The rules don't change and an outdated edition will serve you well. I'm still referring to an edition from many years back.

Maryn, hoping to help
 

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It made the closing seamless(add comma) and that's what clients wanted(lose comma) and what got Ike referrals.

I started with this one. A good rule for commas before conjunctions is to consider whether both sides of the conjunction could be their own sentences & still maintain the meaning. “That’s what clients wanted & what got Ike referrals” works perfectly fine as a sentence. “What got Ike referrals” does not.

What's happened is, through the years, the Chicago Police Department has gotten better at dealing with them, so they moved out here where they're less well known and the local police departments are small and ill-equipped.


No comma added after “known.” But, Sage, “the local police departments are small & ill-equipped” can be a complete sentence, you say. You are correct. But it changes the meaning because that section is part of the “where” before it.
 

Gregg Bell

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Caveat -- I have never done sentence diagrams, because I didn't take AP English (who has the money for that?) and I'm a pretty strong descriptivist.

I wouldn't put the comma in your first sentence. Adding the comma feels Overly Formal and Stuffy. But also that is a REALLY long sentence. Also I assume the "them" the Chicago PD are dealing with isn't the same "they" that's moving out here...but now that I write that, I think maybe they're the same they/thems? I honestly can't tell if the PD moved to somewhere else or the (bad guys?) moved. Context might help but also having it not be one huge sentence would, too.

I'm split on having the comma in your second sentence lol. But I am more concerned with "flow" and pacing than I am with being 100% "correct." I'd need to see that sentence in context with others to see the vibe/flavor of what you're going for.

There's probably A site that diagrams the sentences but...computers are not that smart. The reason why I love language (and I'm not a great programmer) is because words, grammar, and punctuation all exist in various shades of grey while computers can only see things in black and white. Even in English, people can't agree upon how to use certain things, so thee's all those different manuals of style. I mean, this exists in programming, too, you don't NEED semicolons in JS, but I HAVE to say "let var = value" or the like, I can't say "var equals value" even though, to your squishy meat brain, it means the same thing. A computer, at best, is going to really struggle with diagramming a longer sentence.

Also what would diagramming a sentence even accomplish? There's no objectively 100% correct way 2 English, and that's not going to find it for you, because it doesn't exist.
Thanks a lot. You remind me that writing is more about communicating effectively than rules.
 

Gregg Bell

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Never heard of a sentence diagrams in English* (I wasn't taught punctuation that way) but I have some thoughts on fixing the first sentence.

(*I've heard of teachers making students do that in Latin but only in the context of "this is a really terrible way to teach Latin")



That's an extremely clunky sentence to begin with. There are also two ideas mashed together in the underlined bit: 1. they moved out where they're less well known and 2. the local police departments are small and ill-equipped. I think the issue with it isn't the punctuation but that you're trying to cram too many things into one sentence. To fix that, you can make it into two sentences.

You also don't need the "what's happened is" - if I was going to start a sentence with that, I'd go for "what's happened is this:" then whatever follows the colon can be a main clause/complete sentence in its own right. Although for a sentence that's already suffering from clunkiness, removing unnecessary bits usually starts to help make it less clunky.

I would suggest something like this:

Through the years, the Chicago Police Department has gotten better at dealing with them, so they moved to (name of place). Here, they're less well known and in addition, the local police departments are small and ill-equipped.

There are other ways to make what you've got into two sentences. Exactly how you fix it would depend on what points you want to emphasise.

Generally speaking, if I'm struggling to punctuate a sentence I look at what's wrong with the sentence rather than what's wrong with the punctuation.



You don't have to have a comma here if you don't want one. Commas aren't always a case of you have to have one versus you cannot have one. Sometimes it's optional. Consider whether the comma makes the sentence clearer or not, or if it breaks up a longer sentence.
Thank you. I especially needed to hear the below.
Commas aren't always a case of you have to have one versus you cannot have one. Sometimes it's optional. Consider whether the comma makes the sentence clearer or not, or if it breaks up a longer sentence.
 

Gregg Bell

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Just my taste is to leave it how you have it, although it certainly could be split into two sentences.

We diagramed sentences in middle school, the teachers admitting we will NEVER actually do this in real life. The point was to get us thinking about how to construct a sentence, illustrate the logic of syntax, and if you couldn't connect every part of the sentence to the diagram the sentence had a fatal error. I'm not sure if it helped, but then again maybe it did.
Thanks. (I'm sure it helped.)
 

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It made the closing seamless(add comma) and that's what clients wanted(lose comma) and what got Ike referrals.

I started with this one. A good rule for commas before conjunctions is to consider whether both sides of the conjunction could be their own sentences & still maintain the meaning. “That’s what clients wanted & what got Ike referrals” works perfectly fine as a sentence. “What got Ike referrals” does not.

What's happened is, through the years, the Chicago Police Department has gotten better at dealing with them, so they moved out here where they're less well known and the local police departments are small and ill-equipped.


No comma added after “known.” But, Sage, “the local police departments are small & ill-equipped” can be a complete sentence, you say. You are correct. But it changes the meaning because that section is part of the “where” before it.
this, precisely. I always told students to cover the sentence up through the "and" (or but, nor, or, etc) with their thumb, and if what came after could stand as a sentence, you need the comma. If what comes after cannot stand, you don't need it.
(unless of course it's a list, and that's your Oxford comma. But I'm talking about the difference between compound sentences with a coordinating conjunction and compound predicates with a coordinating conjunction.)
 
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Gregg Bell

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I'm old enough to have been taught sentence diagrams in two languages. I don't find the skill remotely useful and I don't think you need to be able to diagram to determine what role in the sentence a particular phrase fulfills.

While there are work-arounds (and I fully approve of work-arounds) like making it into two sentences or rephrasing to remove your doubt in how to punctuate, I'm going to address your questions as if there were a compelling reason to retain the wording just as it stands. For the record, if this were mine to change, I would. I'm less than enthusiastic about how these sentences are put together.

What's happened is, through the years, the Chicago Police Department has gotten better at dealing with them, so they moved out here where they're less well known and the local police departments are small and ill-equipped.

No comma between here and where. There is no comma rule that indicates the need. It may help you to create a shorter, simpler sentence with the same construction, which may make it more obvious that no comma is needed.

Chicago criminals moved where they're less well known and the police are underfunded.

You wouldn't put a comma in that one, right? Your original sentence is pretty much the same thing.

It made the closing seamless and that's what clients wanted, and what got Ike referrals.

Again, no comma needs to be here, although an editor would not fault you for inserting one. More likely, though, an editor would want you to rephrase that, removing one and, inserting an emdash, or turning it into two sentences. It's ungainly as it stands.

It sounds to me like you really need to master the rules for comma usage and identifying parts of a sentence's structure, not find a website that can do it for you. Knowing this stuff is part of a writer's tool kit.

If it's in your budget, find yourself a good grammar book aimed at college students or higher. I'm a fan of The St. Martin’s Handbook. When there's a new (and fairly expensive) edition, the previous edition gets cheap. The rules don't change and an outdated edition will serve you well. I'm still referring to an edition from many years back.

Maryn, hoping to help
While there are work-arounds (and I fully approve of work-arounds) like making it into two sentences or rephrasing to remove your doubt in how to punctuate, I'm going to address your questions as if there were a compelling reason to retain the wording just as it stands.
^ Thank you!

And thanks for the analysis, and the St. Martins' rec!
 

Gregg Bell

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It made the closing seamless(add comma) and that's what clients wanted(lose comma) and what got Ike referrals.

I started with this one. A good rule for commas before conjunctions is to consider whether both sides of the conjunction could be their own sentences & still maintain the meaning. “That’s what clients wanted & what got Ike referrals” works perfectly fine as a sentence. “What got Ike referrals” does not.

What's happened is, through the years, the Chicago Police Department has gotten better at dealing with them, so they moved out here where they're less well known and the local police departments are small and ill-equipped.


No comma added after “known.” But, Sage, “the local police departments are small & ill-equipped” can be a complete sentence, you say. You are correct. But it changes the meaning because that section is part of the “where” before it.
Great stuff. Thank you. Personally, I think the comma can stay in between "wanted" and "and" because it's a place where I want the reader to pause because "and what got Ike referrals" is like a kicker and what's important to (greedy) Ike.

No comma added after “known.” But, Sage, “the local police departments are small & ill-equipped” can be a complete sentence, you say. You are correct. But it changes the meaning because that section is part of the “where” before it.
And without knowing (before you pointed it out) this ^ is what was driving my crazy! Thanks so much for scratching this itch!
 

Gregg Bell

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this, precisely. I always told students to cover the sentence up through the "and" (or but, nor, or, etc) with their thumb, and if what came after could stand as a sentence, you need the comma. If what comes after cannot stand, you don't need it.
(unless of course it's a list, and that's your Oxford comma. But I'm talking about the difference between compound sentences with a coordinating conjunction and compound predicates with a coordinating conjunction.)
Great suggestion. (Only now I'll need to keep a glass cleaner on my desk to get rid of all the thumb prints on my monitor!)
 
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Caveat -- I have never done sentence diagrams, because I didn't take AP English (who has the money for that?) and I'm a pretty strong descriptivist.
Lol, I never diagrammed sentences because I did take honors and AP English (it wasn't more expensive to take it back then in the dark ages) and we were too "advanced" for that by high school. However, I think sentence diagramming kind of went out of vogue when I was in elementary school. I have vague memories of teachers doing it with us maybe in second or third grade but not after that.

It baffled me. I did better just learning rules about how sentences were constructed and imitating what I saw when I read.

I do tend to get confused in recent years about commas now being optional where I learned they were needed for clarity. I'm not talking about the Oxford comma, which was actually taught to me as optional if omitting it doesn't change the meaning, but regarding when to use a comma after an introductory statement or when a sentence has nonrestrictive elements.

I've noticed more and more trade published novels (and newspaper or magazine articles) where commas are omitted from introductory elements in sentences or when clauses are nonrestrictive. It sometimes makes me assume a particular meaning of a sentence and then I discover it is different as the context emerges later.

For instance:

The boy who had red hair was crying vs. The boy, who had red hair, was crying. They don't mean precisely the same thing, but many editors don't seem to know this nowadays.

For me I don't visualize the difference in terms of diagramming but in terms of meaning. In the first sentence, I "see" a group of kids with different hair colors, and the little boy with red hair is the only one crying. With the second I see in my mind's eye just one kid who is crying, and his hair happens to be red.

I am wondering if different people benefit from different approaches to teaching grammar and punctuation, though. This is why "one size fits all" pedagogy du jour" approaches to teaching drive me nuts.

To answer the OPs post, I did find this site that reviews different sentence diagramming tools.

 

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The boy who had red hair was crying vs. The boy, who had red hair, was crying. They don't mean precisely the same thing, but many editors don't seem to know this nowadays.

I'm pretty sure most editors would still use commas for a parenthetical statement, although, more importantly, they'd suggest saying "red-haired boy" or "redheaded boy"

Did I need a comma after statement? I think I did, but it just makes the rest more confusing. Meh.

But yes, the thing that really confused me is how often you need commas before "and" (not the Oxford comma) to note a separation in time between two actions. (ie, "I picked up a potato chip, and ate it"... although, really, you'd just say "I ate a potato chip" because the "picked up" adds nothing in context so that's a terrible example)
 

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But yes, the thing that really confused me is how often you need commas before "and" (not the Oxford comma) to note a separation in time between two actions. (ie, "I picked up a potato chip, and ate it"... although, really, you'd just say "I ate a potato chip" because the "picked up" adds nothing in context so that's a terrible example)
It would also confuse me, as I’ve never heard that “rule”
 
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Nether

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It would also confuse me, as I’ve never heard that “rule”

I only became aware that was a thing because I was proofreading somebody's book and noticed (no comma there, by the way) he had commas in front of "and" in a lot of places. So i instinctively started to take them out before I started to look into it.

Granted, I'm probably describing the concept so badly as to be incomprehensible.
 

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Hmm, a quick Google search isn’t showing me any evidence of that. Do you have a link, by chance?

Closest things I could find:

1) The opposite might be true. It is an author’s prerogative to lose the comma between two independent clauses if they are short.

2) A comma might be added when a phrase is added to a sentence that sounds contradictory to the rest. (None of the examples I saw included conjunctions, but I could imagine an example like this: She was happy, but nauseated). This is my best guess for your rule, but it has no time factor.
 

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The boy who had red hair was crying vs. The boy, who had red hair, was crying. They don't mean precisely the same thing, but many editors don't seem to know this nowadays.

For me I don't visualize the difference in terms of diagramming but in terms of meaning. In the first sentence, I "see" a group of kids with different hair colors, and the little boy with red hair is the only one crying. With the second I see in my mind's eye just one kid who is crying, and his hair happens to be red.
That's a really good example! And it's not just editors who don't seem to know this ;)
 

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Hmm, a quick Google search isn’t showing me any evidence of that. Do you have a link, by chance?

I googled it maybe 5 years (and three laptops) ago, so I'd have to start from scratch. However, it also came up in a few writing lectures (during my whole spree in late 2020 when I was laying the groundwork for getting back into fiction-writing), which brought it to mind again, including one of Sanderson's BYU lectures (and that'd be even harder to through, since there multiple years of... I think 13 or 14 lectures each) where his example and run-through made more sense than mine.

I'll try to look it up later, but I imagine somebody on AW probably knows what I mean.
 

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I'm pretty sure most editors would still use commas for a parenthetical statement, although, more importantly, they'd suggest saying "red-haired boy" or "redheaded boy"
I actually don't think that's super important here, as it's unrelated to the point at hand. Even though the sentence I pulled out of the top of my head as a quick example could be reworded, it doesn't mean every nonrestrictive clause could or should be eliminated to avoid using commas ;)

I more than occasionally see missing commas that change the meaning of a sentence in ways that seem unintended in trade-published work.
 
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I actually don't think that's super important here, as it's unrelated to the point at hand. Even though the sentence I pulled out of the top of my head as a quick example could be reworded, it doesn't mean every nonrestrictive clause could or should be eliminated to avoid using commas ;)

I more than occasionally see missing commas that change the meaning of a sentence in ways that seem unintended in trade-published work.
"Let's eat, Grandma!" is my favourite sentence ever for explaining why Commas Are Important.
 
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Nether

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tbh, I have a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves lying around somewhere. They had me at the title.
 
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"Let's eat, Grandma!" is my favourite sentence ever for explaining why Commas Are Important.
I enjoy "I love cooking my pets and my family" as well.

And let's not forget the timeless example of when the Oxford comma would be needed: We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin.

Nonrestrictive clauses can be a bit trickier to parse. One of the more obscure rules is when you would use commas when designating someone's relationship.

I had my brother Ed over for lunch vs. I had my brother, Ed, over for lunch.

Both are grammatically correct sentences, but they mean different things WTR whether you have one brother, who is named Ed, or whether Ed is just one brother you have.

One could argue about whether or not the reader "needs" to know your brother's name or whether he is your only brother or not, and of course context can provide. But it's nice, imo, to have a rule that allows the writer to decide what is relevant information.

I'm not up on diagramming, but with the first of the two, I assume the name would be part of the main sentence structure, while with the second it would be off on one of those little side hashes?

This is also an example where the a word like "over" is needed for clarity, since I had my brother for lunch implies something else.
 
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Lol, I never diagrammed sentences because I did take honors and AP English (it wasn't more expensive to take it back then in the dark ages) and we were too "advanced" for that by high school. However, I think sentence diagramming kind of went out of vogue when I was in elementary school. I have vague memories of teachers doing it with us maybe in second or third grade but not after that.

It baffled me. I did better just learning rules about how sentences were constructed and imitating what I saw when I read.

I do tend to get confused in recent years about commas now being optional where I learned they were needed for clarity. I'm not talking about the Oxford comma, which was actually taught to me as optional if omitting it doesn't change the meaning, but regarding when to use a comma after an introductory statement or when a sentence has nonrestrictive elements.

I've noticed more and more trade published novels (and newspaper or magazine articles) where commas are omitted from introductory elements in sentences or when clauses are nonrestrictive. It sometimes makes me assume a particular meaning of a sentence and then I discover it is different as the context emerges later.

For instance:

The boy who had red hair was crying vs. The boy, who had red hair, was crying. They don't mean precisely the same thing, but many editors don't seem to know this nowadays.

For me I don't visualize the difference in terms of diagramming but in terms of meaning. In the first sentence, I "see" a group of kids with different hair colors, and the little boy with red hair is the only one crying. With the second I see in my mind's eye just one kid who is crying, and his hair happens to be red.

I am wondering if different people benefit from different approaches to teaching grammar and punctuation, though. This is why "one size fits all" pedagogy du jour" approaches to teaching drive me nuts.

To answer the OPs post, I did find this site that reviews different sentence diagramming tools.

For me I don't visualize the difference in terms of diagramming but in terms of meaning.
^ This is really good. And thanks a lot for the link. Appreciate it.