• The outside air is much more refreshing than inside.

Do you notice anything wrong with the sentence above?

In the sentence above, the outside air is being compared to the inside when the outside air should be compared to the inside air.

A correct way to rephrase the sentence would be to say:

  • The outside air is much more refreshing than the stale air indoors.

Now, we’re comparing the air outside to the air inside.

International learners of English may have trouble at first noticing errors in parallelism that they make, but much like subject-verb agreement, parallelism is a relatively consistent rule that is easy to execute. Just knowing the formula will help you not make mistakes in the future, and you won’t have to memorize a long list of idioms or vocabulary.

Here’s another example.

  • Paul’s English is better than Tia.

Here, Paul’s English is being compared to the person Tia when it should be compared to Tia’s English skills.

To fix this, we can rewrite the sentence like so:

  • Paul’s English is better than Tia’s.

Now, we’re properly comparing the English skills of Paul to the English skills of Tia by expressing that Paul’s English is better than Tia’s (English).

Parallelism doesn’t just apply when comparing; it can also be seen in lists.

Here’s an example:

  • My hobbies include swimming, playing piano, and I also like to knit scarves.

The list consists of gerunds (verb forms ending in -ing) until the last object in the list (I also like to knit scarves) which is actually a whole sentence on its own. To make the list consistent and abide by the proper rules of parallelism, we can change the last part to also be a gerund:

  • My hobbies include swimming, playing piano, and knitting scarves.

Now, let’s put your knowledge of parallelism to the test. What do you notice about this sentence?

  • The company is looking to hire an employee who is hard-working, meticulous, with a sense of responsibility.

As you probably noticed, the last item in the list is not consistent with the other two. This can be fixed by changing that last item to an adjective as such:

  • The company is looking to hire an employee who is hard-working, meticulous, and responsible.

In short, if you have a list of items, make sure they are consistent. The same goes for when comparing two or more different objects or ideas.

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