Parallel sentence elements in grammar
are just like parallel lines in geometry:
they face the same direction and never
meet.
Parallelism mistakes
[Link] forms
Incorrect: Olympic athletes usually like practicing, competing, and to eat ice cream sandwiches.
In this sentence, practicing and competing are gerunds (verbs functioning as nouns) and “to eat”
is an infinitive. It sounds pretty awkward—just like being an athlete with a sweet tooth.
Instead:
Correct: Olympic athletes usually like practicing, competing, and eating ice cream sandwiches.
or
Correct: Oympic athletes usually like to practice, compete, and eat ice cream sandwiches
2. Nouns vs. verbs
Incorrect: For dinner we like lamb chops and to fry brussels sprouts.
Lamb chops is a noun. Brussels sprouts is a noun too, but fry is a verb.
Correct: For dinner we like lamb chops and brussels sprouts.
or
Correct: For dinner we like to grill lamb chops and fry brussels sprouts
3. Noun number
Incorrect: Public transit such as buses or a train can help reduce air pollution
Multiple buses, one train? That’s not going to solve any environmental issues. Here’s a better
solution:
Correct: Public transit such as buses or trains can help reduce air pollution
Faulty parallelism - pg 295
Irregular verbs - pg 221
Faulty parallelism
Words in a pair or series should have parallel structure. The items in a
sentence must be in the
same grammatical form.
1. A balanced series of descriptive words
- After the camping trip I was exhausted, irritable, and wanted to eat.
2.A balanced series of to verbs
- My hope for retirement is to be healthy, to live in a comfortable house, and
having plenty
of money.
3. Balanced verbs and word order
- Fred puts out the trash, checks the locks on the doors, and the burglar
alarm is turned on.
Exercise
1. Many old people fear loneliness, becoming ill, and poverty.
2. Taiyaba dropped a coin into the slot machine, pulled the lever, and was
waiting to strike it
rich.
3. The magazine cover promised stories on losing weight quickly, how to
attract a rich
spouse, and finding the perfect haircut.
4. People immigrate to America with hopes of finding freedom, happiness,
and in order to
become financially secure.
5. Andreas is known to skip classes, make excuses, and then he borrows his
classmates’
notes
6. I like to text my friends and chatting online.
7. I use my TV remote control to change channels, to adjust the volume, and
for turning the
set on and off.
8. One option the employees had was to take a cut in pay; the other was
longer hours of
work.
9. The refrigerator has a cracked vegetable drawer, one of the shelves is
missing, and a
strange freezer smell
Irregular verbs
Regular verbs
In English, most verbs are turned into the past tense by adding ‘-ed’ to the
end of a base form of
the verb, they are called regular verbs.
Examples:
● Play – played – played
● Work – worked – worked
● Talk – talked – talked
Irregular verbs
In contrast, some English verbs don’t follow this rule when changing into the
past tense (past,
past participle). There’s also no rule for them. Those verbs are called
irregular verbs.
Examples:
● Go -went – gone----
● Do – did – done
● See – saw – seen
Exercise
1. We standed out in the rain all night to buy tickets to the concert.
2. The nervous mother holded her child’s hand tightly as they crossed the
busy street.
3. He had wrote the answers to all the questions before anyone else had
finished the first
