Parallelism
Putting items that play the same role into the same grammatical form — in a list, after a correlative pair, in a comparison, and after a single governing word — and spotting the faulty parallelism that error-detection and sentence-improvement questions rely on.
What you will be able to do
- Explain what parallel structure is and why an exam tests it.
- Make the items in a list or series parallel.
- Keep both halves of a correlative pair and both sides of a comparison parallel.
- Spot faulty parallelism after a shared verb, preposition or article.
What is inside this lesson
- 1What parallel structure is
- 2Parallelism in a list or series
- 3Parallelism with correlatives
- 4Parallelism in comparisons
- 5Parallelism after a shared word
- 6Worked example: three items
- 7Common mistakes
- 8Quick revision
- 9Practice
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What parallel structure is
Parallelism means that two or more items doing the same job in a sentence appear in the same grammatical form — all nouns, or all -ing forms, or all clauses of the same shape.
The role involves planning projects, coordinating teams, and reporting to the board. — three -ing phrases.
The role involves planning projects, to coordinate teams, and reports to the board. — a mix, so it reads as broken. Exams test parallelism heavily in error detection and sentence improvement because the fault is easy to miss on a first read.
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