Parallel Constructions

Parallel Constructions

Good sentences often use what people call “parallel constructions." It's the way we extend basic structures in sentences and add to them: sentences with parallel constructions will unfold to a certain moment and then offer a series of different words, phrases, or clauses that all serve the same function. That series might name three actions in the sentence, for example, or present four different objects that each receive the action.

We call those series of words, phrases, and clauses “parallel constructions” because we expect each of them to be able to do the same thing – to occupy the same space in the sentence.

"False" Parallel Constructions

Here’s an example of when somebody gets this kind of structure wrong, which is what people often call a false or faulty parallel construction:

Haylee soon arrived at school, where she attended morning classes, charged her laptop, met a friend, and her teacher.

If it feels like there's a kind of hiccup in this sentence, like something's missing, that's right: the last underlined element in this series of constructions doesn't have an action in it, as each of the others do. Because the others do, we expect that it will too: she attended, she charged, she met, she...blanked. But instead of a verb naming an action, we get a noun. So "her teacher" seems to follow from "met," which violates the pattern this writer has set up.

That sentence should look like this:

Haylee soon arrived at school, where she attended morning classes, charged her laptop, met a friend, and talked with her teacher.

So a series of verb phrases, underlined above, follows from “she” in this sentence. Perfect – a good, well-constructed parallel.

Grammatical Explanation

So where do these expectations about parallelism come from? Let's take a step back for a minute to think about this a little. Those expectations are a function of what linguists call syntax -- the fact that sentences have meaning because we place words in a specific order.

Here's what we mean: we understand who won the game in a sentence like “The Red Sox beat the Yankees” because of syntax – that is, where each word is located in the sentence. Like this:

S V DO

The Red Sox beat the Yankees.

The Red Sox are doing the beating here, of course, and the Yankees are getting beaten – subject, verb, direct object, just like most English sentences. You can think of these roles in sentences as “slots,” which is actually the term linguists use. But of course, if you flip the two words around, the Yankees win the game -- subjects come at the beginning, objects at the end. (Good news if you're a Yankees fan!)

That's syntax.

Syntax is a very powerful principle. It's the reason people so often talk about the “scaffolding” and “skeleton” of sentences, as if they were a kind of architecture or anatomy. Sentences, which follow predictable patterns to connect ideas, are all about structure.

Our expectations about parallelism are based on our perceptions of these kinds of deeply familiar patterns. We're waiting for each of the constructions set up in a series to do the same thing, to serve the same purpose, to fill the same slot. When they don't, they throw the structure of the sentence off balance.

How To Fix False Parallel Constructions

Identifying and fixing false parallel constructions means sorting out the overall structure of the sentence and figuring out what falls in what slot. This doesn't mean you need to be able to identify subjects or direct objects by name, but only that you start to listen carefully for patterns and trust your ear.

Here's another example:

In her memoir, she thought hard about her childhood, her most formative experiences, and that she was often misunderstood by critics.

Again, the pieces that are supposed to be parallel -- her childhood, her experiences, and that she was misunderstood -- just aren’t each capable of doing the same thing, something your ear is likely to be able to tell you as you listen to the sentence. Could you say "She thought hard about that she was often misunderstood?" Clearly, the "that" clause doesn't fit in this sentence.

We could, however, revise like this:

In her memoir, she thought hard about her childhood, her most formative experiences, and how she'd often been misunderstood by critics.

Could you say "She thought hard about how often she'd been misunderstood my her critics?" Of course.

Parallelism of Form

You should also notice that sometimes we expect not only that pieces of parallel constructions will be capable of doing the same work in the sentence, but also that they be phrased in the same way. So you probably wouldn’t say:

Petra loved both to ride the train and going to the city.

But you could say either:

Petra loved both riding the train and going to the city.

Or:

Petra loved both to ride the train and to go to the city.

You have to trust your ear particularly in these cases – there’s really no way to specify when this is a requirement exactly. It’s about what sounds natural, or “idiomatic.” But these kinds of parallels are something to be conscious of and sensitive to as you reread and polish your work. And generally speaking, parallelism and symmetry are powerful tools: the more “parallel” sentences are, the more effective they will feel.