ENGL 101 Lecture 10: note10.01
27 Mar 2016
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When we talk about parallelism, we are talking about similar things lining up. These three pencils are parallel because they all face the same direction. If one of the pencils faces a different way, it is no longer parallel with the other two. In grammar, parallelism refers to elements in a sentence that should be parallel, or lined up, with one another. Parallelism is important in your writing because it makes your meaning clear. It is especially important to watch for parallelism when you have items in a series and items in comparisons. A series refers to a list, such as cooking, reading, and dancing. The words in this list take the same form. They all end in -ing, so they are parallel. In a sentence, a parallel series looks like this-- lena likes cooking, reading, and dancing. A sentence that isn"t parallel looks like this-- lena likes cooking, to read, and dancing.
