Parallel Structure

By Sherry Wilson

Parallel structure requires sentence parts of the same value to be expressed with the same grammatical structure. Doing this properly will help to make your writing clear and concise.

To find places in your manuscript where the parallelism might be strengthened, do a search for the coordinating conjunctions “and” and “or.” Then look on either side of the conjunction and determine if those words are in parallel.

Here are some examples:

1. Faulty Parallelism:
Katie likes writing, drawing, and to work with paints.

Corrected:
Katie likes writing, drawing and painting.

Or:
Katie likes to write, draw and paint.
(Ensure the actions are all the same tense.)

2. Faulty Parallelism:
She always ran quickly, deliberately and with a great deal of grace.

Corrected:
She always ran quickly, deliberately and gracefully.
(All are changed to adverbs here.)

3. Faulty Parallelism:
The coach told the players they should get a lot of sleep, they shouldn’t eat too much, and to do some warm-up exercises before the game.

Corrected:
The coach told the players they should get lots of sleep, they should not eat too much, and they should do some warm-up exercises before the game.

Or:
The coach told the players they should get lots of sleep, not eat too much and do some warm-up exercises before the game.

(The following was added by Sandy Tritt)

Note that bullet items and list items should also be parallel in construction and begin with the same part of speech.

Faulty Parallelism:
We offer many other writing tips:
- Within this blog
- Tips pages on our website
- Our Tips and Techniques Workbook has lots of tips not found elsewhere
- When we edit your manuscript.
- At our workshops

Corrected:
We offer many other writing tips:
- Within this blog
- On our website
- In our Tips and Techniques Workbook
- With an edit of your manuscript
- At our workshops

Making your sentences parallel in construction is one more way to strengthen your writing. And we can all use that.

Thanks for stopping by!
© 2010 Inspiration for Writers, Inc.