Parallelism in Writing

By: Keivan Taban

In this writing, you will see what parallelism is and why it is important when it comes to constructing clearer sentences and lists. But first, I should define parallelism in grammar. Parallelism is the equality of words, phrases, or grammatical constructions in a sentence when all these words, phrases, or grammatical constructions are meant to have the same value. In other words, if you are writing or stating ideas of equal importance or weight, that equality of weight or importance must be reflected in the grammatical construction of the ideas or items you wish to present. To make the above definition clear, here I give you an example:

I like playing soccer, taking pictures, and riding my bike.

In this sentence, I am stating what my favourite activities are, without meaning to single out or put emphasis on any one of them. To make my intention clear to the reader, I used parallel structure in my sentence. The reader will see what my favourite activities are, without inferring or misreading which one is more liked or preferred by me, which is exactly what I want the reader to see, feel, and understand. So, parallelism is a means of creating clarity, ensuring readability, and maintaining consistency in our writing. Parallelism is vitally important when you are writing lists—ordered or unordered (numbered or bulleted lists).

In my own experience as a technical writer and editor, I have come across many manuscripts where writers failed to observe parallelism in their lists. Also, I have seen, numerous times, that writers enumerate items in a sentence, separated by commas, that in no way have any grammatical rhythm or consistency, while the idea is for those items to have or maintain such consistencies. Let me present an example here:

… my responsibilities in the last job I held were

· Creating orders

· Scheduled meetings

· Stationery procurement

· Establishing client relations

Evidently, the above bulleted list has lost its reader simply by not observing parallelism. There isn’t any consistency in how the writer’s responsibilities and duties are listed, nor is there any rhythm in what has been stated. This list can be easily fixed by balancing the grammatical structure of each item in the list, as follows:

… my responsibilities in the last job I held were

· Creating orders

· Scheduling meetings

· Procuring stationery

· Establishing client relations

In the fixed list, gerunds—similar grammatical forms—are used across the list to make it consistent, and to fix the disruption of its flow.

Here is another example of an unparalleled structure in a list within a sentence:

My friend called me last night to discuss his financial situation, buying a house, and ask if I could help him with his mortgage application.

To fix this sentence, we have to make each item of the list grammatically identical in form:

My friend called me last night to discuss his financial situation, to seek my advice on buying a house, and to ask if I could help him with his mortgage application.

Now, we can easily understand the sentence as it has a parallel structure that has improved its clarity and readability.

In conclusion, proper writing requires clear thinking manifested in clear sentence construction. Therefore, Parallelism, amongst other tools, can be used by writers to present their thinking and ideas clearly, effectively, and efficiently.

Remember, writing needs knowledge of the subject matter complemented by the knowledge of the writing itself. Thus, the take-home message is this: master both at the same time.