Friday, February 28, 2014

Mapped Out

I've no particular fondness for the old art of diagramming sentences, although I imagine if I had practiced it a little more carefully when it was assigned in school I'd be better at writing today.

But still, it's interesting to see how the opening sentences of some classic novels look when all laid out on their branches and lines. Naturally, Franz Kafka's is one of the most complex. Herman Melville's Moby-Dick may be one of the more involved works in the English language, but its opening sentence is notable for requiring no dependent branches, just a straight line.

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