{"id":10660,"date":"2019-08-31T12:06:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-31T16:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/?p=10660"},"modified":"2019-09-27T09:09:19","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T13:09:19","slug":"parallel-structure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/?p=10660","title":{"rendered":"Parallel Structure: A Beginner&#8217;s Guide to Understanding This Writing Technique"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let&#8217;s start with a parallel structure example right off the bat. <strong>What\u2019s wrong with this sentence?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To gain more Twitter followers, try to tweet other people&#8217;s blog posts, take part in Twitter chats and replying to other people&#8217;s tweets.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To make the problem clearer, we can turn the sentence into bullet points and add some emphasis:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To gain more Twitter followers, try to:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><i><b>Tweet<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> other people&#8217;s blog posts<\/span><\/i><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Take<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> part in Twitter chats<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>Replying<\/i><\/b><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to other people&#8217;s tweets<\/span><\/i><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Here&#8217;s the problem: the third bullet point doesn&#8217;t match the introductory phrase.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All the verbs in this list should follow &#8220;try to&#8221; &#8230; but &#8220;try to replying&#8221; doesn&#8217;t make any sense.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You may well feel that the mistake is blindingly obvious&#8230;but when you&#8217;re drafting and re-drafting a piece of writing, errors like this can easily creep in.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><strong>What is parallel structure?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Parallel structure \u00a0&#8212; also known as parallel sentence structure or parallelism &#8212; <\/strong><b>means having matching elements of a phrase, sentence or paragraph.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It can be used for literary effect (as we&#8217;ll come see in a moment), but at the most basic level, it simply means ensuring your writing is grammatical.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Any time you introduce a series of points within a sentence or a bullet-pointed list, it&#8217;s important to ensure all the points are parallel. <strong>Often, this means starting each one with a verb in the correct tense.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sometimes, it&#8217;s not grammatically essential to make the points in a list match&#8230;but your writing will still read more smoothly if you use parallelism.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Here&#8217;s another parallel structure example<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Since the easiest way to learn is often to review examples, let&#8217;s look at another parallel structure example.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Before editing:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My favorite three tips for writing faster are:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The internet can be a huge distraction: turn off your connection while you write<\/span><\/i><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you haven&#8217;t tried it before, give dictation a try<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Keep writing: the more you write, the faster you&#8217;ll get and the easier it will be<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>After editing:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My favorite three tips for writing faster are:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Turn off your internet connection: it can be a huge distraction while you&#8217;re writing<\/span><\/i><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Give dictation a try: many writers report hitting 3000 &#8211; 4000 words per hour when speaking rather than typing<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Keep writing: the more you write, the faster you&#8217;ll get and the easier it will be<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The second version reads more smoothly and seems more assured, simply because each bullet point follows the same format. Each one starts with an imperative verb, then the instruction is followed by a colon and an explanation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you edit your work, look out for sentences and paragraphs that could easily be tweaked to bring each part into line with the others.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Going further with parallel sentence structure<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where possible (and it almost always is), you should aim to use parallelism for subheadings within a blog post or chapters within a book.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For instance, here&#8217;s how to use parallel sentence structure in a blog post. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/pitch-goes-unanswered\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">4 Ways to Cope When Your Freelance-Writing Pitch Goes Unanswered<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Leila Mooney uses the following subheadings (emphasis mine):<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Make<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> sure you did your research<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Follow<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> up<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Recognize<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> a dead end<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Get<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> tough<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each one starts with an imperative verb, creating a polished, coherent effect.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s look at an example in a book, too. Because parallelism can also be used for literary effect: to create a link between two concepts, or to create an echo within a sentence or paragraph.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Perhaps one of the most famous examples is the opening of Charles Dickens\u2019 <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A Tale of Two Cities:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way \u2013 in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even if you\u2019ve never heard of \u201cparallelism\u201d before, I bet you\u2019re already using this technique as a natural part of your writing. Look out for it next time you write a list. This is a great way to improve your grammar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Watch out for parallelism in other writers\u2019 work, too: think about how they\u2019re using it, and how it affects you as a reader.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Getting this wrong is a sure-fire way to look like a beginner. But if you get it right, your writing will read smoothly, and that&#8217;s always a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brush up on your grammar with this quick guide to parallel structure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":37429,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[123,1110,1108,1109,1111],"class_list":["post-10660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craft","tag-grammar","tag-grammar-tips","tag-parallel-structure","tag-parallelism","tag-using-parallel-structure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritelife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}