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Parallelism Breakdowns - Part I

Parallelism breakdowns: Part I verbs

 

You're cruising down your favorite road in early summer. The windows are down, the air off, and you can just smell the new adventures that await you around the next corner. Unfortunately, a car is coming for you around the bend. Smash! They were not on a parallel course, instead, they were aiming right for you as they disregarded the traffic lights and plowed into your car.

Parallelism in writing is a lot like this story. If everything is going well, you'll never notice it. But as soon as you make a mistake, BLAM! Everyone sees it, people arch their eyebrows, and tu es persona estupida.



1.  verbs     Parallelism normally occurs in lists. For instance, you are heading out to Wallyworld and you need to remember to do three things. Each of them requires an action ( a verb). Each of these verbs should use the same ending.

Good example: (ie. I am running the film to the back, I will be taking the blouse back to customer service, and I am looking for an extension cord for my son.

Bad example: (Janet left work early to find the address, to search for her missing resume, and is mailing her letter.) This example starts off very well, everything is similar for the first two items...to find....to search, but then parallelism is broken as the preposition to is dropped, the helping verb is, is added, and the main verb now ends with -ing. This is a very destructive accident, and makes you look like a stiff! The last phrase should be, " to mail her letter."

 

next Parallelism breakdowns: Part II clauses

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