Recognizing and Correcting Faulty Parallel Structure in Sentences

Understand the Problem For a list of actions or items, you must maintain parallel structure. To do this, use equal grammatical units. If the first item is a noun, then the following items must also be nouns. If the first item is a verb, then make the other items verbs.

Know the Solution We spent the hour in the waiting room reading old magazines, eating stale cookies from the vending machine, and we wiggled on the hard plastic chairs. Once you discover a nonparallel item, make it conform to the other grammatical items in the sentence.

Know the Solution . . . reading old magazines and eating stale cookies are participle phrases; (A participle is a verbal (head of a verb phrase) that is used as an adjective and most often ends in - ing or -ed. ) we wiggled is a main clause. To correct the nonparallel item, the sentence would look like:

Know the Solution We spent the hour in the waiting room reading old magazines, eating stale cookies from the vending machine, and wiggling on the hard plastic chairs. or In the waiting room, we read old magazines, ate stale cookies from the vending machine, and wiggled on the hard plastic chairs.

Special Cases not only . . . but also, either. . . . or, and neither . . . nor Each of the above require special attention when proofreading for parallelism.

Special Cases These correlative (paired) conjunctions require equal grammatical units after both parts of the conjunction. You have two possible main clauses like: Not only did Robert buy flowers for his mother, but also he purchased a bouquet for his wife. Robert bought flowers not only for his mother, but also for his wife.

Practice A Brianda was excited about inviting friends over, eating a good meal, and _______. a game of cards to play cards playing a game of cards

I have always enjoyed reading the book more than _______. Practice A I have always enjoyed reading the book more than _______. I watched the movie version. watching the movie. to watch the movie.

Practice A When the weather outside is cold and _______, Edwin likes to be indoors. starting to get windy windy getting windy

Practice A Skateboarding, running, and _______ are three of Brhando’s favorite exercises. racquetball a spinning class bicycling

Practice B Make each sentence parallel, if needed. I find geography most interesting. I like to study faraway locations and learning about famous cities. Do you believe that reading about a beautiful place is almost as good as to visit it? The Seine River runs through the city and supplies water to all Parisians. It is interesting that Paris has always attracted artists, and refugees have always been welcome. to learn visiting parallel welcomed

Let’s try some! Parallel Structure