Classic opening lines get dissected

Wait, you're familiar with the Reed-Kellogg system? And no, we're not talking about scanning the side of a cereal box for nutritional information (zing!).

Okay so maybe we weren't all that familiar with it up until, like, today but it's a form of diagramming a sentence, based on its grammatical structure. It allows for us to see the relation between words and structure.

In a nifty new poster, those smart people at Pop Chart Lab have created diagrams for a set of iconic opening lines from literature, from Nabokov to Wells to Vonnegut. You can see some of the selected ones below and then the entire poster underneath, which can be clicked for a bigger version. It also includes a colour code.

Trust us, it'll all make sense in the end.

You can buy your own here

(click to enlarge)