8. Parallelism

Parallelism is about sentence elements having the same grammatical form so that they are alike in construction. In this way, the elements can be described as parallel. There are various ways to do this. Good examples of parallelism:

Good examples of parallelism:

Examples:

  • Easy come, easy go.
  • Like father, like son.
  • What goes around comes around. 

Examples:

  • No : The team arrived at the cave to photograph the bats, explore the cave, and to collect guano.
  • Yes : The team arrived at the cave to photograph the bats, explore the cave, and collect guano.
  • Yes : The team arrived at the cave to photograph the bats, to explore the cave, and to  collect guano. .
  • No : They described him as a charismatic leader, a competent lawyer, and a politician of good experience .
  • Yes : They described him as a charismatic leader, a competent lawyer, and an experienced politician .
  • No : The employer is looking for workers who are strong, healthy and  having a lot of energy. 
  • Yes : The employer is looking for workers who are strong, healthy and  energetic .

Sentence elements having same grammatical form are joined by coordinating conjunctions such as and , but , and or  as shown here; the coordinating conjunctions are underlined.

Examples:

  • Sailing  and  fishing  are what the two brothers often do together. (Gerunds)
  • He was tall , dark , handsome , plump , but not muscular . (Adjectives)
  • You are welcome to participate  in the game or  to watch . (Infinitives)

 The elements are in the form of phrases in a list or series. 

Examples:

  • What we know  is  what we heard . (Wh-clauses: The elements are parallel and are joined by linking verbs)
  • You missed it because you looked in the cabinet , on top of the cabinet , but not under the cabinet . (The phrases in bold are all prepositional phrases.)
  • That’s all I had for breakfast: a slice of bread , a knob of butter , a lump of cheese , and a piece of ham.  (All are partitive noun phrases)

When a correlative conjunction  ( either/or , neither/nor , not only/but also , both/and , whether/or ) is used in a sentence, it should connect two equal grammatical items. For example, if a part of speech such as a verb follows either , the same part of speech must come after or .

Examples:

  • Tomorrow, she will either go  to her first boyfriend’s birthday party or attend  her second boyfriend’s home-warming party.
  • Bob was neither going  to eat too much food nor letting  himself get overweight.
  • Her only goal in life is not only to marry  a billionaire but also to impress  all her friends with her wealth.
  • Both  my maternal grandmother and  his maternal grandmother are twins.  
  • Sharon has a set of quintuplets and will now decide whether to give up  her job or to hire  a couple of nannies.