Parallel Structure
The purpose of this lesson is to notice and respect parallel structure in a sentence, in a paragraph, and in a document.
Within a sentence, it is important that the words have the same structure as one another. We call this parallel structure. If you have a list of 2 or 3 items, it is important that the nouns, adjectives, verbs, or prepositional phrases are all in the same word form as one another. Every time you make a list of words, it is important to check their structure and to choose one, and make the words all the same part of speech. Observe the following example:
This sentence is wrong. To play on computers is the infinitive of the verb “to play”. Fishing is a past participle of the verb. It can also be used as a noun. Movies is a noun. For parallel structure, you need to make all the words in the series the same. For the first example, if you used the infinitive of each of the verbs, the sentence would be as follows:
If you used the past participle of each verb, the sentence would look like this:
If you used the nouns for each idea in the list, the sentence is a little more awkward. In this case "fishing" is used as a noun.
Here’s another example of a sentence that does not respect parallel structure, so it is wrong.
Social sciences is a noun. Gardens is also a noun but it denotes place not the activity which should be gardening. Playing the flute is the past participle of the verb.
For parallel structure, you need to make all the words in the series the same. For the sentence to be correct, you can use either the noun forms of each of the words, or the past participles of each.
Every time you write a list, check your work to make sure you have used parallel structure. It is all part of good writing!
