I sighed as a lover; I obeyed as a son.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the

body.
Ask not what your country can do for you; ask
what you can do for your country.
• Parallelism in sentences refers to matching
grammatical structures. Elements in a
sentence that have the same function or
express similar ideas should be grammatically
parallel, or grammatically matched.
• A failure to create grammatically parallel
structures when they are appropriate is
referred to as faulty parallelism.
• Parallelism lends balance and grace to writing.
It can make a sentence memorable.
What counts isn't how you look but your
behavior.

What counts isn't how you look but how you

behave.
• The president promised to reform health
care, preserve social security, and a balanced
budget.

• The president promised to reform health

care, preserve social security, and balance the
budget.
• Nouns should be parallel with nouns,
participles with participles, gerunds with
gerunds, infinitives with infinitives, clauses
with clauses, and so on.
• When your sentence includes a series, make
sure you have not used different grammatical
structures for the items.
She bought glass, plate, and mat. (parallel)
She bought a glass, a plate, and a mat.(parallel)
She bought glass, a plate, and a mat.(not parallel)
The buildings in the rural area are smaller than the inner city.

The buildings in the rural area are smaller than the buildings in the inner city.

The school approved the student's right to drop the class but not to meet with
the professor.

The school approved the student's right to drop the class but not to meet with
the professor.

When you are comparing items in a sentence, obviously parallelism will be

important. Make sure that the elements you are comparing or contrasting are
grammatically parallel.
 parallel structure with correlative conjunctions

• Errors in parallel structure often occur with

correlative conjunctions: either …or; neither …
nor; both …and; not only …but also; whether
…or. The sentence structure following the
second half of the correlative conjunction
should mirror the sentence structure following
the first half.
I have neither the patience to complete the assignment nor do I have the time
complete it.

I have neither the patience nor the time to complete the assignment. (parallel:
noun phrase with noun phrase)

Either I like the job or not.

-(faulty parallelism: clause with adverb)

Either I like the job or I don't like it. (parallel: clause with clause)
Either I like the job or I don't. (parallel: clause with clause)

They acted as either individual citizens or as members of the committee.

They acted either as individual citizens or as members of the committee.

 References
• https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-
guides/grammar/common-sentence-
errors/parallel-sentence-structures