ENG1001 University English (I) – Parallelism and Passive Structures

Formality – Parallelism and Passive Structures

A. Parallelism

Parallelism refers to the use of identical grammatical structures for related words,
phrases, or clauses in a sentence or a paragraph.

Parallelism can make your writing more forceful, interesting, and clear. It helps to link
related ideas and to emphasize the relationships between them. Once a grammatical pattern
has been established, the reader doesn’t have to strain to understand your meaning and
ideas. Faulty parallelism refers to the absence of parallel structure and the subsequent loss
of clarity.

Achieving parallel structure

Parallelism ensures that similar clauses or phrases are uniform in expression and function.
To achieve parallelism, you must use the same verb, noun, adverb, or adjective forms
consistently throughout a sentence.

Consider the following examples:

 Paul likes dancing, swimming, and running.

 Paul likes to dance, swimming, and run.

In the sentence “Paul likes dancing, swimming, and running,” all of the activities Paul
enjoys are consistently presented as gerunds (verbs in their –ing form that act as a noun),
which retains parallelism.

On the other hand, in the sentence “Paul likes to dance, swimming, and run,” the activities
Paul enjoys are presented in inconsistent forms, resulting in a sentence that is not parallel.
This results in a decreased flow, an awkward sentence, and an increased amount of work
for the reader.

Situations that require parallel structure

You will encounter many instances where you will need to make sure your sentence is
parallel. The most common situations are listed below:

Lists or series
All lists of things, qualities, or actions should take the same grammatical form.

 Mary loves reading the newspaper, taking long walks, and to dance the tango.
 Mary loves reading the newspaper, taking long walks, and dancing the tango.
Note that there are various ways to create parallel structure in a sentence:

 For opera to take root in Great Britain, infrastructure was required: the building of
financial support, the training of singers, and the education of audiences.
 For opera to take root in Great Britain, three things were required: building
financial support, training singers, and educating audiences.
 For opera to take root in Great Britain, it was necessary to build financial support,
train singers, and educate audiences.

Nouns joined by coordinating conjunctions (e.g., and, or, but)

 Among many cultures, rites of passage can involve feats of courage and sometimes even
doing dangerous things.

In the previous sentence, the addition of the verb doing before the second noun disrupts the
balance of the sentence.

 Among many cultures, rites of passage can involve feats of courage and sometimes even
dangerous things.

Phrases joined by correlative conjunctions

Correlative conjunctions include sentence constructions that include either/or,

neither/nor, both/and, not only/but also, or whether/or. When your sentence includes
these constructions, it is important to proofread carefully for parallelism.

 Jenny is not only fluent in Mandarin but also in English.

 Jenny is fluent not only in Mandarin but also in English.

Since both nouns are modified by a single adjective (fluent), the adjective should be placed
before the first correlative conjunction (not only).

Where each correlative conjunction has its own verb, the correlative conjunction comes
before the verb:

 Peter speaks not only two languages fluently but also plays cricket very well.
 Peter not only speaks two languages fluently but also plays cricket very well.

Source:
University of Waterloo. (n.d.). Parallelism.
https://uwaterloo.ca/writing-and-communication-centre/resources-parallelism
Task One
Improve the grammar of parallelism of the following sentences.

1. Minnie always takes her briefcase, her cell phone, and laptop to the office.
________________________________________________________________________

2. Training employees and to lead by example are two things management should do to
promote ethics and etiquette.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

3. Writing academic essays is both demanding and can pose much challenge to students.
________________________________________________________________________

4. John has difficulty speaking and be a good presenter.

________________________________________________________________________

5. Not only did the twins eat their porridge, but made a mess as well.
________________________________________________________________________

Homework

Online Interactive Exercise 1:

https://chompchomp.com/structure01/structure01.01.htm

Online Interactive Exercise 2:

https://chompchomp.com/structure04/structure04.01.htm
 B. Passive
In English, all sentences are in either “active” or “passive” voice:
 active: the subject does the action
 passive: the subject receives the action

subject verb object

active Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet.

passive Romeo and was written by Shakespeare.

Juliet

How do we make the passive?

In an active sentence, the person or thing responsible for the action in the sentence comes first.
In a passive sentence, the person or thing acted on comes first, and the actor is added at the
end, introduced with the preposition “by.” The passive form of the verb is signalled by a form
of “to be”.

subject + auxiliary verb + main verb + by + agent

be past participle

optional

Tense Active Passive

Simple Once a week, Tom cleans the house. Once a week, the house is cleaned by Tom.
Present

Present Right now, Sarah is writing the letter. Right now, the letter is being written by
Continuous Sarah.

Simple Past Sam repaired the car. The car was repaired by Sam.

The auxiliary be is conjugated in all tenses. The main verb is always the past participle. The
agent is the original "doer" of the action.

Additional examples: https://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/activepassive.html

Passive reporting structures

In newspapers, reports and other more formal writing, this idea is often expressed with a
structure based on a passive reporting verb. Passive structures hide the source of the
information because it is obvious or the source is unimportant or unknown.

1) It + passive reporting verb + that-clause

For example:

 People think that the clothing chain ‘A & C’ is in trouble.

 They say that the shop is offering huge discounts.
 They expect that the company will close next month.

 It is thought that the clothing chain ‘A & C’ is in trouble.

 It is said that the shop is offering huge discounts.
 It is expected that the company will close next month.

Verbs which are often used in this way include: assume, believe, consider, estimate, expect,
hope, know, report, say, think

Note: These verbs are most frequently used in simple and perfect tenses in the present and past.
Remember that verbs like believe, hope, know, think, understand are not used in continuous
tenses.

2) Subject + passive reporting verb + to-infinitive

For example:

 The sky is known to be blue.

 Chocolate is thought to be delicious.

Verbs used like this include: believe, expect, report, say, think, understand

3) When we are talking about a past action, the structure is:

Subject + verb ‘to be’ + Past Participle of reporting verb + to Perfect infinitive clause

Perfect infinitives are used for actions that happened before the reporting.

Compare:

 They believe that competition from online companies was the main reason for its
failure.
 Competition from online companies is believed to have been the main reason for its
failure.
 They estimate that the company lost about $1 million last year.
 The company is estimated to have lost about $1 million last year.

Source:

Reported speech: Reporting structures. (2019). https://grammartop.com/reported-speech-passive-reporting-

structures/
When do I use passive voice?

1. The actor is unknown:

People alleged that the CEO had received bribe from an Australian company. (The
word “people” is an unknown agent)

 It was alleged that the CEO had received bribe from an Australian company. OR
The CEO was alleged to have received bribe from an Australian company.

2. The actor is irrelevant:

An experimental solar power plant will be built in the Australian desert. [We are not
interested in who is building it.]

We found that the Department of Energy did not obtain data about the index of
exhausted fume emission. (We are not interested in who found that.)

It was found that the Department of Energy did not obtain data about the index of
exhausted fume emission. OR

The Department of Energy was found not to have obtained data about the index of
exhausted fume emission.

3. You want to be vague about who is responsible:

Mistakes were made. [Common in bureaucratic writing]

4. You are talking about a general truth:

Rules are made to be broken. [By whomever, whenever.]

5. You want to emphasize the person or thing acted on. For example, it may be your main
topic:

Insulin was first discovered in 1921 by researchers at the University of Toronto. It is

still the only treatment available for diabetes.

6. You are writing in a scientific genre that traditionally relies on passive voice. Passive
voice is often preferred in lab reports and scientific research papers, most notably in the
Materials and Methods section. The passive voice places the emphasis on your
experiment rather than on you.

The sodium hydroxide was dissolved in water. This solution was then titrated with
hydrochloric acid.

Adapted from:
Corson, T., & Smollett, R. (n.d.). Passive voice: When to use it and when to avoid it.
https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/revising/passive-voice/

Passive voice in academic writing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXRFWN17HQU
Task Two
Rewrite the following sentences into passive sentences.

1. People say that this circus is the best in the world.

_________________________________________________________________________

2. People expect that all the teaching staff will be attending the retreat.
_________________________________________________________________________

3. They say that the government official has given bribes to several companies during the
election period.
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________

4. They alleged that the man broke the law twice in a month.
_________________________________________________________________________

5. People expect that the new ordinance will be put into practice next year.
_________________________________________________________________________

Task Three
Rewrite the following paragraphs in a formal way.

1. People in public housing cannot keep dogs because some people believe that this can make
the environment dirty and nasty, but I think government should change the rule if most
people in the public housing agree to keep dogs.
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________

2. Although the electric vehicles are not common yet, they are cheap. Also they give drivers
good driving experience and have less pollution. They may become more popular in the
future.
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________