Is it really as simple as ticking off all the verbs and nouns and other types of word?
Additionally: Where can I find a clear and easy to understand dictionary of grammatical terms and descriptions? I know the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb, but I can’t seem to spot them in context.
Thanks.
Boy, sentence diagramming is fun!
(ok I hated it).
This site has some examples and this page has links to grammar websites.
Almost. In addition to that you analyse the structure of the sentence. This includes the relations between the different parts.
The real fun starts as soon as you:
a. try to teach that to a computer.
b. use ambiguous sentences (much more common than most people think).
e.g. How do you diagram the first sentence in this classic example?
Don’t hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
Does it change if you include the second one? Why? How sure can you be?
In college, I had a freaky English professor that loved to diagram sentences. I think it was his hobby.
He diagramed every sentence in the Dec. of Independence on a big piece of paper and had it framed.
Thanks Lsura. Some of those diagrams remind me of my high school chemistry lessons, heh…
Well that’s why I’m making the topic. 
True, but most sentences aren’t intended to be ambiguous, and those that are are usually clear in context.
I’m not really interested in diagramming jokes (at the moment. Never say never). Seems a bit too much like mental masturbation for me.
Of course I didn’t expect you to do that. It is totally pointless if you do it by hand. Instead I wanted to (ab)use this as an opportunity to mention that there are more interesting aspects to analysing sentences.
Since last fall I am a student of computational linguistics (switched over from computer science.) While we do not usually diagram sentences according to this specific method, some comp. linguists really work on the analysis of the structure of sentences. One goal is to enable a computer to parse a natural sentence and infer the correct structure automatically (and for a computer using the context is much harder.) This is absolutely crucial for many natural language applications (e.g. automatic translation…)
Btw. when I went to school only very passing reference was made to diagramming sentences and more formal grammar teaching was mostly limited to our Latin classes. Apparently diagramming was a rather traumatic experience for many Americans 
There’s no one way to diagram a sentence–there’s not even any discreet way; all the theories run into each other. If you really want to know (or want to be convinced that you really don’t want to know), maybe check out Andrew Radford’s two textbooks in the red Cambridge Linguistics series; one on transformational grammar, and one on minimalism.
Diagramming is fun for a few, a terror to many, and limited and pointless for learning grammar.
Parsing – that’s the ticket!