In English 125, you learned about the importance of parallel structure in writing. Let’s review the basics before expanding on that in this lesson.
Parallelism, simply, refers to grammatical balance between related items in a sentence. You will often write a sentence that contains two or more elements (examples, details, etc.), and these similar ideas must have the same grammatical structure. In other words, nouns should be paired with nouns, adjectives with adjectives, prepositional phrases with prepositional phrases, relative clauses with relatives clauses, and so on.
Here are some examples of sentences with correct parallel structure. The parallel elements are highlighted.
- Smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and eating junk food are very ineffective ways to deal with stress.
- Before you submit your application, please make sure to check that you have filled out the entire form and that all the information is accurate.
- No one knew who he was or where he came from.
Omission in Parallel Structures
When constructing parallel structures, it is common to omit or remove parts of the grammatical structures to make the sentence shorter and more natural. You can generally remove words like participles, prepositions, articles, or even whole phrases. Take a look at the example sentence below.
- The information sessions were taking place at 9:00 AM, at 10:00 AM, and at 11:00 AM.
It has correct parallel structure, but the repetition of at sounds unnatural. Omitting it will create a much smoother sentence.
- The information sessions were taking place at 9:00 AM, 10:00 AM, and 11:00 AM.
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