Parallelism

PARALLELISM

When most people hear the word parallelism, they think of geometry. But language has features of parallelism also. If sentences are not properly balanced (or parallel), they are grammatically incorrect.

Here's an easy example.

For exercise, I like jogging, swimming and to walk. ERROR!

There are two ways to correct this unbalanced (unparallel) sentence.

For exercise, I like jogging, swimming and walking. CORRECT!
For exercise, I like to jog, swim and walk. CORRECT!

Let's look at three more easy examples; see if you can correct them.

1. The students were ready, willing, able and had an optimistic outlook.
2. The puck band is loud, intense and performs with lots of energy.

3. I play soccer on Friday nights at Lansdowne Stadium; on Monday evenings, I play squash at the YMCA.

Here are the answers.

Parallelism errors occur only where information is listed. In the first example, three pieces of information were listed (i.e. jogging, swimming and walking) in sentence form. But lists can occur in other forms too, including

enumerated (point) form
bulleted form
subtitle form

So remember, whenever you are listing information, each piece of information must be grammatically parallel to the others in order to be correct. Be careful whenever you are

writing numbered lists,
using point form or bullets, or
creating subtitles