Parallelism Is More Than Just Good Writing
Parallelism is often cited as a sign of good writing—and for good reason. Parallelism does a great job of tying together a series of ideas and items through parallel syntax. In parallelism, there is an agreement between verb, noun, adjective, and adverb form that is not only good grammar but, when used effectively, draws attention to what is being written.
This is most famously used in speeches and texts. Think of Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech—in the speech he used this device throughout:
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
I’ve underlined the parallelism here so it can be plainly seen, and indeed, it is obviously repetitious. But it also follows the ‘rules’ whereby it keeps the syntax consistent. (Subject) noun + verb form (present) + (object) noun + verb form (infinitive) is all applied consistently to great effect.
But let’s look at a more academic-sounding example.
Members of the council were obliged to communicate, share, and distribute the results of their deliberations.
Each of the underlined verbs carries the infinitive form and is joined to the preposition to. As it is, this is a pretty standard sentence. However, if I wanted to create emphasis, I can repeat the preposition.
Members of the council were obliged to communicate, to share, and to distribute the results of their deliberations.
By adding more parallel syntax, I’ve now created emphasis on each action of the council members.
Parallelism Is Also Bad Writing
On a simple level, if authors don’t use parallelism, they are making a grammatical error that will stick out like a sore thumb to anyone reading it. Let’s use our earlier example again:
Members of the council were obliged to communicate, share, and distributed the results of their deliberations.
As you can see, the verb forms are no longer in parallel. Furthermore, by changing the infinitive verb form of ‘distribute’ to the past participle, I’ve now created a new sense in the sentence. The action to distribute is no longer connected to what members of the council were obliged to do but is instead connected to the past form of the verb to be. It’s now in parallel with ‘obliged’ because they have the same form:
Members of the council were obliged to communicate, share, and distributed the results of their deliberations.
This causes grammatical problems. The comma between ‘communicate’ and ‘share’ no longer functions because it is a pair, not a list. Moreover, by connecting ‘distributed’ to the verb ‘to be’ the sentence has become nonsensical. In order to see this more clearly, let’s use a trick and remove the other parallel verb to see if the sentence works:
Members of the council were distributed the results of their deliberations.
Now, grammatically, it is council members being distributed, not the results. Furthermore, those results have lost a connection to the rest of the sentence.
And this is why the concept of parallelism in writing is so important. It’s not just a sign of good writing; if you don’t use it properly, it makes your work nonsensical, which in academic writing is extremely important (as you well know).
Let’s try another example from a bio I recently reviewed (details changed):
Jon Smith is an assistant professor, a neuroscience specialist, and explores evolutionary biology at the Faculty of New Languages, Grammar University.
This is bad or faulty parallelism. And it’s because it is wrong in its syntax. On the face of it, it seems to make sense. We are just listing descriptive items about Professor Smith. But, if we look closer, we can see it is actually nonsense. The first two underlined nouns in the list are tied to the verb to be, but the third item is not a noun at all, ruining the parallelism. As above, if we test item three by removing the other items, the sentence is obviously wrong: ‘Jon Smith is explores evolutionary biology’. Urgh! For the sentence to make sense, it either needs to be (1) restructured or (2) made parallel. For example:
Jon Smith is an assistant professor and neuroscience specialist, at the Faculty of New Languages, Grammar University, where he explores evolutionary biology.
Jon Smith is an assistant professor, a neuroscience specialist, and an evolutionary biologist at the Faculty of New Languages, Grammar University.
How about a less obvious, but equally wrong example of parallelism:
The concept is also relevant to countries in Europe, the United States, and Latin America.
In this case, the syntax is fine. The problem lies in the geography. Europe and Latin America are geographical areas containing multiple countries, but the United States is not. Again, we can test it: ‘The concept is also relevant to countries in the United States.’ Ask any American, and regardless of how well educated they are, they know this statement is nonsensical.
As you can see, parallelism is extremely important when it comes to creating intelligible writing that is clear and concise. Not only does it improve your writing, it also keeps in sensical.
And this is important and applies whether we are speaking about words, phrases, clauses, long lists after colons, pairs, and, as in Dr. King’s example, even sentences—wherever ideas are being shared. For example, here is an instance of good parallelism in clauses:
The report finds that the population is increasing on the town’s periphery, that this increase is creating strain on the urban systems, and that this is likely to require further development of the transportation network to serve those new populations.
Note that in the final clause, I’ve changed the verb tense to present so as to keep the parallel structure—that+noun+verb—despite speaking about a future possibility. This is acceptable in grammar and is preferred because of the parallelism.
For a more detailed textbook-like breakdown of parallelism rules, I recommend the article ‘Using Parallel Structure in Writing’ by Amy Luo for Scribbr.