let's hear it for the nuns

Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences will not appeal to everyone, but if you went to school in the seventies (or before) and maybe were educated by a bunch of energetic Immaculate Heart of Mary nuns like I was, you have to read this book. It does not have the detailed rules of diagramming that some similar texts contain, but it does hold enough info to prompt you to re-examine your own skills as a grammarian. The humor is light and engaging. The diagrams are all hand-written which further adds to the charm here. What really hooked me though was the long list of memories that this little volume brought back to me. As I read, I could almost hear Sister Michael Mary reviewing the placement of a gerund in a diagram. This post is short because I need to go out for some supplies - a 12-inch ruler, red pen, black pen, lots of wide-ruled paper.