Sister Charles Bronson

Hey Folks,

I was at Borders in Columbus the other day, and I asked a lady who works there about a book I'd heard discussed on NPR: Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog:The Quirkey History of Diagramming Sentences. Having been an English teacher for 31 years, I DO have an interest in diagramming (which became passe during my years in the education wars). And the Sister Bernadette angle was a hook since I spent eight years in the chatechisimal wars as well.

Anyway, they didn't have the book and would order it, but I didn't really want to buy the book; I just wanted to look at some of the diagrams of famous persons' sentences - especially Henry James'.

Before I turned away, though, the lady said, "I had a friend who almost got kicked out of Catholic school for the way she capitalized and punctuated a sentence presented to the class by Sister."

The task, she explained, was to correctly capitalize and punctuate the following:

billy cant read beowulf today hell do it tomorrow

Of course, there are several options:

Billy can't read Beowulf today. He'll do it tomorrow.

Billy can't read Beowulf today; he'll do it tomorrow.

The clerk's friend got in trouble because she solved the problem this way:

Billy can't read Beowulf today. Hell ! Do it tomorrow.

- Uke Man