Visual design principles and effective sentence diagrams for the 21st century

Most sentence diagramming follows either the Reid-Kellogg (noun|verb)approach or some variant of Chomsky´s syntax-tree (NPVP) approach. Both methods violate principles of effective visual design: graph lines should be implied wherever possible, aligned to an organizing grid, and diagram details should be scalable. Not surprisingly then, traditional sentence diagramming is not often used or useful to analyze sentences from actual communication. This paper will describe a more visually sound approach to sentence diagramming, demonstrably useful to writers and editors working in 21st century media. The structure of a realistically complex sentence can be shown on a smartphone screen, using any standard keypad.