ENGLISH 8

Lesson 24

Parallel Structures

Parallelism is using the same grammatical pattern for two or more clauses or sentences.

Examples: We will walk on our feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.

- Ralph Wald Emerson

We stand together where Europe’s heart was cut in half and we celebrate unity. We stand where
crude walls of concrete separated mother from child and we meet as one family. We stand where
those who sought a new life instead found death. And we rejoice in renewal.
- Bill Clinton

The rules of parallelism are as follows:

1. Express parallel ideas in the same grammatical form.

Example: Wrong: I love partying, talking, and to eat.

Right: I love partying, talking, and eating.

2. Place correlative conjunction between parallel terms.

Example: Wrong: My sister enjoys ancient languages and ancient culture.

Right: My sister enjoys ancient languages and culture.

3. In parallel constructions, repeat an article, a preposition, or a pronoun whenever necessary

to make the meaning clear.

Example: (The priest and the commentator are not the same person.)

Wrong: After the wedding, we were introduced to the priest and commentator.
Right: After the wedding, we were introduced to the priest and the commentator.

4. Do not use similar constructions to express dissimilar ideas.

Example: Wrong: I am treating her out and I love football.

Right: I am treating her out because we won in a football competition.
 ENGLISH 8

Name:_______________________ GradeLevel and Section:_______

Teacher: Ms. Jogie P. Sardon Activity No: 24
Due Date:____________ Date Submitted:_________

GRAMMAR IN ACTION

(Rewrite the following paragraph to eliminate any case of faulty parallelism.)

When I heard that we had passed the finals, we wanted to jump for joy, scream our
lungs out, and patting each other on the back. We immediately made plans for a van
we could hire, partying, and going around. We went wild, spending the evening eating,
the best nachos we had ever tasted, drinking all the sodas our stomachs could hold,
and we went up to the top of a building just to see the view of the city. Finally at 4 AM,
we decide that we were tired, that we had to go home, and we wanted to climb to bed.