Parallel Structures

موضوع: Parallel Structures السبت 16 يوليو 2011, 4:59 pm

Parallel Structures
Is there anything wrong with the following sentence?
Martin felt the movie was boring, silly, and was too long.

Yes, there is something wrong. Did you find the problem? Well, if you didn’t find the problem, keep reading, and we’ll tell you later.
Did you ever pick up a book and read something like this:
Taking out repetitive words and combining similar sentences and ideas is called parallel structure, parallel construction, and parallelism. In parallel structure, it is important to group similar ideas and items together. For example, in the three sentences above, the words Carol picked up her…repeat. Additionally, the words that do NOT repeat are all nouns: books, pens, and jacket. Since books, pens, and jacket are all nouns, they can be grouped together. Thus, we can correctly write the following:
Carol picked up her books, pens, and jacket.

The items in the list must be all nouns, all infinitives, all prepositional phrases, all gerunds, or all clauses.

Take a look at this sentence:
Paula went to work, a restaurant, and to the movies.

If the preposition or article (a, an, the) is the same for all items in the list, the writer can decide to include them in all of the items or write it just in the first. Therefore, the above sentence is incorrect. The items in the list are work, a restaurant, and the movies. However, the writer used the preposition to with the first and third items only.
INCORRECT Paula went to work, a restaurant, and to the movies.
CORRECT Paula went to work, a restaurant, and the movies.
CORRECT Paula went to work, to a restaurant, and to the movies.

Here is another example:
There are trains leaving the station in the morning and noon.

The preposition is in. When proofreading, ask yourself, “Is this the correct word for each item?”
In the morning? YES!
In noon? NO!

The correct preposition for noon is at. Therefore, we must write
There are trains leaving the station in the morning and at noon.

Some words and verbs use prepositions as well. Look at this example:
The cancer researcher is interested and excited about the new advances in medical technology.

What are the words in the parallel structure? They are interested and excited. When the writer wrote excited, she also correctly wrote about. How about interested? Do you use about withinterested? Let’s do the proofreading test that we learned above.
excited about the advances…? YES!
interested about the advances…? NO!

The correct preposition used with interested is in. Therefore, the above sentence is INCORRECT. The correct preposition must be used in each item of the parallel structure. The following is correct:
The cancer researcher is interested in and excited about the new advances in medical technology.

موضوع: رد: Parallel Structures السبت 30 يوليو 2011, 7:16 pm

Thanks