Grammar 101: Parallelism

Parallel structure, also known as parallelism, is useful (adj.), important (adj.), and cool (adj.).

Knowing how parallelism works will help you succeed in writing assignments (preposition + noun), on the SAT exam (preposition + noun), and in everyday conversations (preposition + noun).

Let’s look at some more examples of parallelism at work:

• Peter enjoys singing, dancing, and talking about manga.
• Henry likes to read, to write, and to play video games. (“Henry likes to read, write, and play video games” is also correct.)
• Nan went to the store and bought coffee, tea, and bread.

Let’s look at a few more examples:

• Katy Perry likes fireworks, wearing cherry lipstick, and to live in California. → WRONG 🙅 (noun, -ing, to verb)
• Katy Perry likes fireworks, cherry lipstick, and California. → RIGHT ✔ (noun, noun, and noun.)

• Last week, Henry watched 14 episodes of Game of Thrones, perused three chapters of One Piece, and he wrote three long articles. → WRONG 🙅 (past tense, past tense, pronoun + past tense)
• Last week, Henry watched 14 episodes of Game of Thrones, perused three chapters of One Piece, and wrote three long articles. → RIGHT ✔ (past tense, past tense, past tense)

💁 Next time, we’ll cover the more idiomatic examples of parallelism, e.g., either … or, neither … nor, not only … but also.