Subject + Verb + Clause, Clause, Clause

Diagramming sentences, that lost pleasure of 7th grade English class, has been cropping up all over the place lately. I deal with decent sentence structure all the time, as I grade papers and either find sentences with breathless clause after clause after clause or curiously missing verbs or subjects that leave me desperately unfulfilled. If last night is any indication, Sarah Palin has never diagrammed a sentence in her life, or she would understand that they have to have both distinct starting and ending points. I don't think I've ever heard anyone embed a run-on inside of a run-on and then abruptly end both in a comma like she does. I've seen a couple of comments in the New York Times lamenting the difficultly of transcribing what Palin says, and the end result seems to involve a lot of em dashes, repeated "also"s and invented periods.

Just now, I got a note from the campus Writing Center advertising a 5-week course entitled "The Fine Art of Sentence Diagramming," in which glorious fall Friday afternoons will be spent diagramming sentences penned by Henry James. Apparently, Gertrude Stein once said, "I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences." I honestly loved diagramming sentences in middle school -- it was like geometry for words -- but then again, I'm apparently an egghead. Better that than a serial run-on rambler!