Some individuals may become paralyzed at the prospect of making a decision.
You can also apply parallelism across a passage: For example, if you talk about Jane Goodall and Henry Harlow, you should say “Goodall and Harlow,” not “Jane and Harlow” or “Goodall and Henry.” This is something that would carry on through your entire paper: you should use the same mode of address for every person you mention. If you’re writing a research paper that includes references to several different authors, you should be consistent in your references. You may find that the parallel example sounds much better to your ears. The nonparallel example, is grammatically valid “down the alley he sprinted” is an entirely separate clause.
Parallel: “The dog ran across the yard, jumped over the fence, and sprinted down the alley.”.Lacking parallelism: “The dog ran across the yard and jumped over the fence, and down the alley he sprinted.”.To make them parallel, the sentences should be rewritten with just gerunds or just infinitives. Note that the nonparallel example, while inelegantly worded, is grammatically correct: “cooking,” “jogging,” and “to read” are all grammatically valid conclusions to “She likes.” Once again, the examples above combine gerunds and infinitives. Parallel: “She likes to cook, jog, and read.”.Parallel: “She likes cooking, jogging, and reading.”.Lacking parallelism: “She likes cooking, jogging, and to read.”.While the first sentence is technically correct, it’s easy to trip up over the mismatching items. The application of parallelism improves writing style and readability, and it makes sentences easier to process. Was the second sentence a smoother read than the first? The second sentence uses parallelism-all three verbs are gerunds-whereas in the first sentence two are gerunds and one is an infinitive. Yara loves running, swimming, and biking.Yara loves running, to swim, and biking.What exactly is parallel structure? It’s simply the practice of using the same structures or forms multiple times: making sure the parts are parallel to each other. Parallel structure can be applied to a single sentence, a paragraph, or even multiple paragraphs.