Parallelism in Writing
I first wrote this in 2003 at my forum, but now that it is gone, I need to republish for my purposes. I am writing a review of Jensen’s Format Writing and in my syllabus, I had a link to the now gone forum topic. I will link that to this blog entry in case anyone out there wants to make a comment regarding parallelism in writing.
Aug 24 2003:
When I tested my son with an ACT practice test, I noticed that he has trouble detecting faulty parallelism in sentences.
So on to that…….
Below are some examples of parallelism instead of a lengthy explanation.
The Beatitudes are an example of parallelism in a group of sentences.
Blessed are ……. for they……..
(Matthew 5)
Common parallelism errors:
To sing, to laugh, and dancing will enrich your day. < — Wrong
To sing, laugh, and to dance will enrich your day. < — Wrong
To sing, to laugh, and to dance will enrich your day. < — Good (all infinitives)
Singing, laughing, and dancing will enrich your day. < — Good (all verbs end with ing)
She wants health, wealth, and to be happy. < — Wrong
She wants to be healthy, wealthy, and happy. < — Okay
She wants health, wealth, and happiness. < — Better
the books, papers, and the pencils < — Wrong
the books, the papers, and the pencils < — Good
books, papers, and pencils < — Good
My friend is faithful and helps me. < — Wrong
My friend is faithful and helpful. < — Corrected
She is friendly, smart and a good neighbor. < — Wrong
She is friendly, smart, and neighborly. < — Corrected
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Below is something that your middle-grades child has probably studied although it was not called parallelism; it was probably referred to as.. “Keeping the same tense throughout the sentence/paragraph…” (shifting tense).
Tense shifts:
The dog chased squirrels while the cat stalks birds. < — Wrong
The dog chased squirrels while the cat stalked birds. < — Corrected
She had made pudding for breakfast and has made ice cream for lunch.
< — Wrong, had made and has made are of different tense.
She has made pudding for breakfast and has made ice cream for lunch.
< — Corrected
References
Linked below is a web page that tells precisely what parallelism is: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/parallelism.htm
The web page that is linked above defines parallelism and has examples as well as two quizzes.
Donna Young
Because I am tired of the old ruled planner, I'm placing a new ruled planner online. This one is dated and ready to print, no need to write the month and year.
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