[Hoot]
When you get your paper back from your teacher covered in red scribbles, it can be hard to
figure out what all the comments mean.
One that students often have trouble with is “parallelism” or “parallel structure”
– that sounds like math, so what’s it doing on your Moby Dick essay?
Hi, I’m Bianca with the Purdue Online Writing Lab, here to talk about parallel structure
– what it is, what it’s used for, and why your teacher cares about it so much.
You may already know that in geometry, parallel lines are lines that are side by side and
won’t ever touch.
You may have seen images in math textbooks like this one, where you have several parallel
lines that are the same distance apart all the way down their lengths.
How does that relate to writing?
In writing, when we talk about parallel structure, or parallelism, we’re talking about words
or phrases that are arranged the same way all the way through the sentence (or paragraph,
or essay – parallelism is scalable!).
For example, if I were to say I enjoy three kinds of art, I might say I like coloring,
painting, and sculpting.
See how these words all have the same “ing” ending?
That means they’re parallel – in other words, they all match, or they are all the
same kind of word (in this case, they are all gerunds).
If I were to try to say I like coloring, to paint, and sculpt, that would probably sound
wrong to you.
I might even stumble over my words because they’re not parallel – they don’t flow
off the tongue, even though they mean the same thing as the first set of words.
Making single words parallel is pretty easy, but we can do this on a larger scale, too.
For instance, if we were to say “The coach told the players that they should get a lot
of sleep, that they should not eat too much, and to do some warm-up exercises before the
game,” that wouldn’t be parallel.
“That they should + verb” is our phrase, so we have to stick with it all the way through.
A parallel alternative might be “The coach told the players that they should get a lot
of sleep, that they should not eat too much, and that they should do some warm-up exercises
before the game.”
Can you think of any other ways we could rewrite the sentence to make it parallel?
[Music]
So, now we’ve seen some examples of parallelism and we’ve talked about how we can revise
sentences to make sure they are parallel.
But why does it matter?
Why would this be something your teacher would mark on your paper?
Well, parallelism does two big things in your writing.
First, it makes it sound good – it flows off the tongue and it makes it easier to read
the sentences (especially out loud).
The less your reader stumbles when they read your work, the better!
Second, parallelism puts concepts on equal footing.
That means that you’re giving the same amount of importance and impact to sleep, diet, and
exercise, to go back to the example we just did.
If one of those items is hard to read or isn’t stated as clearly as the other items, it won’t
be as memorable, and your writing then won’t treat it as important.
Well, that does it for today.
Hopefully, next time you see parallelism or parallel structure written in red on your
paper, it won’t be quite so hard to "do the math.”
[Painful silence]
[Screams of the damned]
I’ve been Bianca with the Purdue OWL. Thanks for watching!
[Hoot]
Hi everyone. This is Joe. I'm the guy who edits most of these videos.
While I was working on this one, I noticed something very special that Bianca did.
I want to share it with you now, but this will require us to inaugurate a new segment
I'm calling the Purdue OWL Gesture Replay.
Now look what Bianca does here to illustrate parallel structure.
That's right, folks.
You're seeing a brand-new, never-before-seen hand gesture
where the index fingers rocket up and down next to each other
like two bullet trains passing each other at 300 miles per hour.
Wow!
That is just incredible.
If we can focus now on her left index finger, just look at the sheer power we're seeing here.
It's enough to give you whiplash!
Look, other writing labs will tell you there are no new hand gestures left,
but Bianca here finds a way to innovate.
That's why they pay us the big bucks over here at the OWL, and that's why we can keep serving up that hot, hot content.
So, don't forget to smash that like and subscribe, smash that notification bell,
and generally just try to keep it locked on the OWL's YouTube channel.
Uh, yeah. Thanks for watching.