CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Parallelism
Parallel constructions in sentences bind related thoughts together and give them more force.
In parallel construction, the same form is repeated in a balanced way. The elements in a parallel construction are equal or nearly equal in grammatical structure and importance. Parallel constructions may help you make lists, join similar ideas, or build emphasis. The coordinating conjunctions—and, but, or, nor, and yet—always join parallel structures.
The simplest parallel structure is the series with two or more elements in it:
She loved to read magazines and newspapers.
She loved to read books, magazines, and newspapers.
[The series of nouns joined by the conjunction “and” provides a list of words telling what she loved to read.]
At Gettysburg
[Here prepositional phrases are joined in a parallel construction. Each phrase is equal grammatically to the other two.]
He did the dishes, ran the vacuum, put out the garbage, and walked the dog.
[A compound predicate, here with four verbs, is placed in parallel form. Each element in the series includes a transitive verb and a noun that serves as a direct object.]
He runs marathons, and she runs sprints, but they train together.
[A series of independent clauses, each with an active verb, makes a parallel form.]
Many athletes live to hear the roar of the crowd, to feel the love of their fans, and to enjoy the attentions of reporters.
[A series of infinitive phrases forms a parallel structure.]
She walked home slowly, smelling the aroma of wood smoke, seeing the decorated streets, and feeling at peace with the world.
[A series of participial phrases at the end of the predicate modifies the subject, she.]
a Use parallelism to compare and contrast.
Parallelism helps make comparisons and contrasts more emphatic.
Weak: She preferred to buy a house rather than renting one.
[The contrasting elements “to buy” and “renting” are not parallel; “to buy” is an infinitive, and “renting” is a participle.]
Better: She preferred to buy a house rather than to rent one.
[The two infinitives are parallel.]
or
Better: She preferred buying a house rather than renting one.
[The two participles make a parallel form.]
Weak: The new library was larger than the old one, more beautiful than any other building on campus, and it cost too much money.
[The parallel form breaks down in the final clause. The first two elements, “larger” and “more beautiful,” are comparative adjectives, and readers expect another comparative adjective to follow them.]
Parallel: The new library was larger than the old one, more beautiful than any other building on campus, and more expensive to build than anyone had imagined.
[The revision includes the comparative adjective “more expensive.”]
b Use parallel forms for coordinating elements like both . . . and, either . . . or, neither . . . nor, not only . . . but also, and whether . . . or.
Pairs like these, often called correlatives, always indicate a choice or a balance between equal elements. Because the equality is important to the sense of the sentences where these elements appear, it should be expressed in the parallel form that makes it stand out.
Weak: Most soldiers in the Civil War were neither heroic nor were they cowardly.
[The adjective “heroic” does not balance the clause “nor were they cowardly.”]
Better: Most soldiers in the Civil War were neither heroic nor cowardly.
[Now the contrasting adjectives, heroic and cowardly, are equal grammatically, emphasizing the equality of form indicated by the words “neither” and “nor.”]
Weak: The parking lot for commuters was both small and it was crowded.
[The adjective “small” does nor balance the clause “it was crowded.
Better: The parking lot for commuters was both small and crowded.
[The two adjectives give equally important description of the parking lot.]
Nonparallel: He told the boy either to brush the horse or feed the chickens.
Revised: He told the boy either to brush the horse or to feed the chickens.
Nonparallel: We were warned that we must either pay our rent or we must vacate the apartment.
Revised: We were warned that we must either pay our rent or vacate the apartment.
The magazine was not only the first thing he read in the morning but also the last thing he looked at before bed.
[The parallelism is maintained by an adjective clause modifying the noun “thing” in each element.]
Our economic future depends on whether we love automobiles or leave them.
[The parallel forms are the verb “love” with its direct object “automobiles” and the verb “leave” with its direct object “them.” They imply an equal choice.]
c Use parallelism in making lists and outlines.
Weak: Americans now rely on the automobile because:
þ cities are sprawling; public transport is poor.
þ habit.
þ the cheapness of gasoline for so long.
þ parking lots provided for employees and students by businesses and schools.
þ general convenience.
þ shopping malls depend on automobiles.
In this list, the meaning could be much clearer if every bulleted item completed a sentence begun by the lead thought: “Americans now rely on the automobile because.” The meaning would be even clearer if every bulleted item were parallel with every other item.
Better: Americans now rely on the automobile because
þ cities are sprawling, and public transport is poor.
þ they have formed the habit of driving cars everywhere.
þ gasoline was cheap for a long time.
þ automobiles are convenient.
þ businesses and schools provide parking lots for employees and students, encouraging them to drive.
þ shopping malls were built to depend on automobiles.
Each of these bulleted items begins with a noun or nouns introducing a clause. Each item would complete the heading by making a complete sentence.
Weak: The Renaissance in England
þ an extension of trade routes.
þ merchant class became more powerful.
þ the death of feudalism.
þ upsurging of the arts.
þ the sciences were encouraged.
þ religious quarrels began.
Better: The Renaissance in England
þ the extension of trade routes.
þ the increasing power of the merchant class.
þ the death of feudalism.
þ the upsurge of the arts.
þ the encouragement of the sciences.
þ the rise of religious quarrels.
Exercise 1. Identify the parallel elements in the following sentences. How does parallelism contribute to the effectiveness of each sentence?
1. This apparent amnesia, which Freud labeled infantile or childhood amnesia, applies only to our memories about the self, not to our memory for words learned or objects and people recognized.
Patrick Huyghe
2. The faster the plane, the narrower the seats.
John H. Durrell
3. They [pioneer women] rolled out dough on the wagon seats, cooked with fires made out of buffalo chips, tended the sick, and marked the graves of their children, husbands and each other.
Ellen Goodman
4. The mornings are the pleasantest times in the apartment, exhaustion having set in, the sated mosquitoes at rest on ceiling and walls, sleeping it off, the room a swirl of tortured bedclothes and abandoned garments, the vines in their full leafiness filtering the hard light of day, the air conditioner silent at last, like the mosquitoes.
E.B. White
5. Aging paints every action gray, lies heavy on every movement, imprisons every thought.
Sharon Curtis
Exercise 2. Revise the following sentences to make coordinate, compared, or listed elements parallel in structure. Add or delete words or rephrase as necessary to increase the effectiveness of each sentence.
SAMPLE After emptying her bag, searching the apartment, and having called the library, Jennifer realized she had lost the book.
ANSWER After emptying her bag, searching the apartment, and calling the library, Jennifer realized she had lost the book.
1. The reviews of the play were uniformly positive: unstinting praise for the actors; the director’s interpretation was acclaimed; and the reviews applauded the playwright’s technique.
2. Her tennis coach taught her how to serve and rushing the net and winning the point.
3. The unprepared student wishes for either a blizzard or to have a blackout on the examination day.
4. Working last summer as a waitress, I learned about choosing wine, how to serve wine, and making small talk while wrestling the cork from the bottle.
5. My favorite winter activities are skiing, reading, and to drink herbal tea by the fire.
6. To receive an A in that class, one must have both a perfect attendance record and academic record.
7. In moving from Vermont to California
8. After a week on a construction job, Leon
9. To lose weight, cut down on what you eat, eat fewer calories in the food you do consume, and you should exercise regularly.
10. Her generosity, sympathetic nature, and the fact that she is able to motivate employees make her an excellent supervisor.
d You may emphasize parallelism by repeating important words introducing parallel elements.
Without a Repeated Infinitive Marker: They thought it was better to agree than quarrel.
With a Repeated Infinitive Marker: They thought it was better to agree than to quarrel.
[The infinitive marker “to” is repeated before “agree” and “quarrel” to emphasize the parallelism.]
Without a Repeated Preposition: They searched for the lost keys in the house, yard, and street.
With a Repeated Preposition: They searched for the lost keys in the house, in the yard, and in the street.
[The repetition of the preposition “in” emphasizes the parallel form and helps call attention to the difficulty of the search.]
Without a Repeated Article: For the handicapped, getting an education is often a tribulation, necessity, and victory.
With a Repeated Article: For the handicapped, getting an education is often a tribulation, a necessity, and a victory.
[Repetition of the article “a” before each noun stresses the parallel form and emphasizes the nouns that make up the series.]
Without a Repeated Connective: I decided to leave when I realized that I had offended him, he was angry, and my apology would do no good.
With a Repeated Connective: I decided to leave when I realized that I had offended him, that he was angry, and that my apology would do no good.
[The repetition of the connective “that” emphasizes the parallelism of these three dependent clauses and makes the clauses more emphatic.]
Note that the sentences without the repeated elements in these examples are correct and parallel. But repetition of an element may help you add a certain kind of emphasis to your sentences. You do not always have to make that choice, but from time to time, repetition will strengthen your style.
Exercise 3. Rewrite the following sentences to create parallel forms.
1. Harrison Ford was a hot-rod driver in American Graffiti, a rocket-ship pilot in Star Wars, and he played Indiana Jones, the archaeologist in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
2. Orson Welles starred on radio, he directed and appeared in movies, and toward the end of his life advertised wine on television.
3. We biked around the reservoir, over the hills, enjoyed the country roads, and we ended at the ice-cream store.
4. He was not a good writer, and he couldn’t speak very well either.
5. Many people in America
Exercise 4. Revise the following sentences to repeat introductory words before parallel forms to make the parallelism more striking.
1. The new ultralight aircraft can land on a sandbar, back lot, or small street.
2. She promised to help out in the day or night.
3. They piled their books on the sofa, tables, and beds.
4. She made three promises—that she would try the machine out, write up a report about it, and tell her friends if she liked it.
5. The railroad tracks passed through a tunnel and then over a river and highway.
e If you begin a clause with “and which,” “and that,” “and who,” or “and whom,” be sure that it follows a clause that begins with “which,” “that,” “who,” or “whom.”
Faulty: The peach tree, with its sugary fruit and which was not known in the Middle Ages, seems to have developed from the almond.
[The “and” must join two equal grammatical elements. But here it tries to join the prepositional phrase “with its sugary fruit” to the dependent clause “which was not known in the Middle Ages.”]
Parallel: The peach tree, which has a sugary fruit and which was not known in the Middle Ages, seems to have developed from the almond.
[Now the “and” joins two dependent clauses, each introduced by “which.”]
Faulty: Thelonius Monk, with his deft fingers and who recorded for decades, was one of the great jazz pianists.
[The “and” tries to join the prepositional phrase “with his deft fingers” to the dependent clause “who recorded for decades.”]
Parallel: Thelonius Monk, with his deft fingers and his decades of recording, was one of the great jazz pianists.
[Here the “and” successfully joins the two objects of the preposition “with”—”fingers” and “decades.”]
Faulty: Walt Whitman, influenced by Emerson and whom multitudes loved, was the first great American poet to praise cities in his verse.
[The “and” tries to join the phrase “influenced by Emerson” to the clause “whom multitudes loved.”]
Parallel: Walt Whitman, whom Emerson influenced and whom multitudes loved, was the first great American poet to praise cities in his verse.
[The “and” joins two clauses, “whom Emerson influenced” and “whom multitudes loved.”]
or
Parallel: Walt Whitman, whom Emerson influenced and multitudes loved, was the first great American poet to praise cities in his verse.
[Here the second “whom” has been dropped, but the parallelism is maintained between “Emerson influenced” and “multitudes loved.”]
Exercise 5. Revise the following structures as necessary to make good parallel constructions.
1. The movie Gone with the Wind, filmed in Technicolor and which cost millions of dollars to make, was the first talking movie about the Civil War to be a success at the box office.
2. Television, the great rival to the movies and which movie people hated at first, was not allowed to show the Academy Awards until 1952.
3. General Douglas MacArthur, American leader against Japan
4. She hoped to win her first marathon, the one she entered at Boston
5. He brought home a new car, large, fire-engine red, expensive, and which he could not afford.
f Use parallelism to increase coherence.
Parallelism not only ensures similarity of form for coordinated structures but also enhances coherence by clearly relating paired or opposed units. Consider this sentence:
Nonparallel: During the early weeks of the semester, the course reviews fundamentals, but little emphasis is placed on new material or more advanced concepts.
Here “the course” is doing two things—or doing one thing and not doing the other—and these are opposites. But the nonparallel construction of the sentence (the course reviews . . . little emphasis is placed) does not help the reader see the connection quickly.
Revised: During the early weeks of the semester, the course reviews fundamentals but places little emphasis on new material or more advanced concepts.
Effective parallelism will enable you to combine in a single, well-ordered sentence related ideas that you might have expressed in two or three separate sentences. Compare the following three sentences with the original single sentence written by H.L. Mencken.
Slang originates in the effort of ingenious individuals to make language more pungent and picturesque. They increase the store of terse and striking words or widen the boundaries of metaphor. Thus a vocabulary for new shades and differences in meaning is provided by slang.
Slang originates in the effort of ingenious individuals to make language more pungent and picturesque—to increase the store of terse and striking words, to widen the boundaries of metaphor, and to provide a vocabulary for new shades and differences in meaning.
H.L. Mencken
Parallel structure works as well to emphasize the connections among related sentences in a paragraph.
Style is an extraordinary thing. It is one of the subtlest secrets of all art. In painting, it is composition, color-sense, and brushwork. In sculpture, it is the treatment of depths and surfaces and the choice of stones and metals. In music, it is surely the melodic line, the tone-color, and the shape of the phrase. In prose and poetry, it is the choice of words, their placing, and the rhythms and melodies of sentence and paragraph.
Gilbert Highet
Here, Gilbert Highet clarifies and emphasizes his assertion that style is common to all forms of art by casting four successive sentences in the same structure (In . . ., it is . . .).
Exercise 6. Combine each group of sentences below into one concise sentence in which parallel elements appear in parallel structures. You will have to add, delete, change, and rearrange words. Each item has more than one possible answer.
SAMPLE Christin sorted the books neatly into piles. She was efficient about it, too.
ANSWER Christin sorted the books neatly and efficiently into piles.
1. The professor spoke rapidly. Moreover, his voice was almost inaudible.
2. The cyclists finally arrived at their destination. They arrived after riding uphill most of the day. They had also endured a hailstorm.
3. I go to jazz class on Wednesday evenings. Sometimes I attend on Friday afternoons.
4. Finding an apartment requires expenditures of time and energy. It requires paying close attention to newspaper advertisements. It also requires that one learn the city’s neighborhoods.
5. After making several costly mistakes, he stopped to consider the jobs available to him. He thought about his goals for a job.
6. To make a good stew, marinate the meat. There should be plenty of vegetables added. Wine should be included for flavor. Simmer the whole thing for at least two hours.
7. Carlone had three desires. First, he wanted money. Second, he wanted to be famous. The third desire was for happiness.
8. The sun looks small at its zenith. But it looks large when it reaches the horizon.
9. Most people who saw the movie were unimpressed with the acting. Or they frankly criticized the acting.
10. We returned from camping very tired. We were dirty. Mosquito bites covered us.
Exercise 7. Revise the following paragraph to create parallelism wherever it is required for grammar or for coherence.
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