Part I:

Parallel construction is one of our most powerful tools for organizing and presenting ideas. It cannot be overemphasized that making our sentences grammatically and semantically correct is simply not enough. We should also ensure that each of their grammatical structures that are alike in function follows the same pattern. In fact, observance of this basic stylistic rule very often spells the difference between good and bad writing.

To give us a better idea of the power of parallel construction, let us first examine the following simple sentence: “Alberto likes reading, jogging, and to play computer games.”

We will find that it’s structurally disjointed and doesn’t read well because not all of its serial elements follow the same pattern. Although the first two elements, “reading” and “jogging,” are in parallel because both are gerunds (“-ing” noun forms), the third, “to play computer games,” ruins the parallelism because it is in the infinitive form (“to” + the verb stem).

One quick way to fix this structural problem is to put the third element also in gerund form, “playing computer games,” so that the sentence reads as follows: “Alberto likes reading, jogging, and playing computer games.” It is now grammatical balanced and no longer sounds stilted.

Another way for the original sentence to achieve parallelism is to make all three of its serial elements take the infinitive form: “Alberto likes to read, to jog, and to play computer games.” This sentence, of course, can be streamlined even further by using “to” only once right before the first of the all-infinitive parallel elements: “Alberto likes to read, jog, and play computer games.”

In actual practice, we have to put in parallel not only single words or short phrases but much more complicated grammatical structures such as extended phrases and clauses as well as long serial lists. However, the basic rule for parallel construction remains the same: never mix grammatical forms. We have to choose the most appropriate form for the similar or related ideas, then stick to the same pattern all the way.

Consider the following sentence with three extended elements that are not all in parallel: “The chief executive decided to terminate the advertising manager because he rarely managed to come up with the company’s TV commercials on time, approved the publication of several major print advertising with serious grammar errors, and his relations with both his staff and the advertising agencies were very bad.”

The first subordinate clause, “he rarely managed to come up with the company’s TV commercials on time,” is in parallel with the second subordinate clause, “[he] approved the publication of several major print advertising with serious grammar errors,” because both are active verb forms using “he” (the advertising manager) as the subject. However, the third subordinate clause, “his human relations with both his staff and the advertising agencies were very poor,” disrupts the parallelism because it takes the passive verb form and takes for its subject not “he” but another noun form, “his relations with both his staff and the advertising agencies.”

See how much better the sentence reads when the third element is modified so it becomes parallel with the first two: “The chief executive decided to terminate the advertising manager because he rarely managed to come up with the company’s TV commercials on time, allowed the publication of several major print advertising with serious grammar errors, and related very badly with both his staff and the advertising agencies.”

Note that the three elements are now all active-voice verb phrases, thus perfectly parallel in form.

We will go deeper into the various ways of achieving parallelism in the next essay. (May 29, 2006)

Part II:

As emphasized in Part I of this essay, the basic rule for parallel construction is to never mix grammatical forms when presenting similar or related ideas. A sentence that presents two or more serial elements should stick to the same pattern all throughout—all noun forms, all gerund forms, all infinitive forms, or all verb forms as the case may be. When serial elements all take the same form, ideas come across much more clearly and cohesively.

We will discuss another very important parallel construction rule this time: A parallel structure that begins with a clause should sustain that pattern all the way. Recall now that a clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a predicate (and can thus function as a sentence in its own right, as in “we should obey the law”), as opposed to a phrase, which is a group of words that doesn’t have them (and thus can’t function as a sentence by itself, as in “to obey the law” or “obeying the law”). When the sentence doesn’t sustain the clause pattern, or when any of the clauses shifts from the active to the passive voice or the other way around, the parallelism falls apart. The result is a disjointed sentence that doesn’t read well.

Take this sentence that contains three serial grammatical elements: “The English professor told the students that they should aim for perfect attendance, that they should always do their assigned homework, and to submit their term papers on time.” The parallelism of this sentence breaks down because while the first two elements—“they should aim for perfect attendance” and “they should always do their assigned homework”—are both clauses, the third element—“to submit their term papers on time”—is not a clause but an infinitive phrase.

We need to make this third element also a clause—“they should submit their term papers on time”—so the sentence can become perfectly parallel and more readable: “The English professor told the students that they should aim for perfect attendance, that they should do their assigned homework regularly, and that they should submit their term papers on time.” Of course, a more concise but less emphatic way to construct this serial-clause sentence is to use the imperative “that they should” only once before the first clause: “The English professor told the students that they should aim for perfect attendance, do their assigned homework regularly, and submit their term papers on time.” (Be forewarned, though, that such streamlining can obscure the meaning in more complicated constructions.)

The parallel structure of a sentence with serial clauses can also be ruined when any of the clauses takes a different voice, say the passive from active: “The president anticipated that majority of the lower house would welcome the planned Charter change, that most of the senators would fiercely oppose it, and that a vicious demolition job would be mounted against it by her political detractors.” Here, the first two clauses—“majority of the lower house would welcome the planned charter change” and “most of the senators would fiercely oppose it”—are in the active voice, but the third clause—“a vicious demolition job would be mounted against it by her political detractors”—is in the passive voice, thus disrupting the pattern.

To make the construction parallel all throughout, we should make the third clause also take the active voice—“her political detractors would mount a vicious demolition job against it.” This results in a more forceful sentence: “The president anticipated that majority of the lower house would welcome the planned charter change, that most of the senators would fiercely oppose it, and that her political detractors would mount a vicious demolition job against it.” (June 5, 2006)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, May 29 and June 5, 2006 © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Next week, Part III and Part IV will take up more ways of using parallelism to enhance the clarity and readability of our writing.

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When an action or event has taken place and how often it has taken place are abstractions that reside solely in our memory or in some recording medium like newspapers, books, and film. They no longer have a physical existence of their own. In contrast, we can easily put the “who,” “what,” “where,” and “how” of things in concrete terms. For instance, we can identify ourselves with nameplates or hang shingles to identify the occupants of doctor’s clinics, law offices, legislatures, and zoos (nouns); we can label certain faces, books, movies, or political maneuverings as disgusting, compelling, or noble (adjectives); or we can mark certain places and behaviors as uncommonly decent, unbelievably tawdry, or ignominiously warped (adverbs that modify adjectives).

It’s not as easy, however, to put our fingers on events in time. Making sense of the unfolding present and of the future is difficult enough, but understanding past events is even more so. This is because the latter have already passed through the time continuum to become abstractions, and our usual conceptual tools for dealing with them—the tenses acting on verbs—are inadequate to communicate them in context. Thus, whether reckoning with the past, present, or future, we need the adverbs of time and of frequency to convey them intelligibly to other people and to keep our thoughts of them alive.

Examine this simple sentence: “Look for the money.” The simple imperative of this sentence sounds clear enough. But on closer scrutiny, we discover that its call for action is inadequate and imprecise: How soon should we look for the money? Precisely when should we do it? How long should we do? Now see what happens when we clarify the sentence with adverbs of time: “Look for the money now.” “Look for the money tonight after office hours.” “Look for the money during the next three hours.” The adverbs of time have given the sentences precise, actionable meanings.

Not let’s examine another sentence: “He paints landscapes.” With no antecedent statement to establish context, it borders on the trivial. But see how it springs to life and relevance with the use adverbs of frequency: “He rarely paints landscapes.” “He regularly paints landscapes.” “He paints landscapes twice a month.” In each case the statement has become more real and palpable to us.

Indeed, the tenses by themselves can only give us a general sense of something occurring. By making the adverbs of time work with them, however, we can pinpoint the precise moment or period of their occurrence. The adverbs of time are, in fact, the defining elements of the tenses. Using the adverb “currently,” for instance, leaves us no choice but to use the present or present progressive tense: “She currently works with the United Nations secretariat.” “She is currently working with the United Nations secretariat.”

In contrast, when we use “recently,” we are forced to use the past tense or past progressive tense: “She recently worked with the United Nations secretariat.” “She was recently working with the United Nations secretariat.”

The adverbs of time are particularly crucial in establishing the perfect tenses—when an action has to be related to other actions happening before or after it. Take this example: “The woman had [already, just, barely, scarcely] dressed up when her lover knocked at the front door.” The adverbs of time create immediacy and tension in juxtaposed actions, and they do so in ways that the tenses alone can never achieve. Along with the adverbs of frequency, the adverbs of time heighten our awareness of our own actions in relation to the unfolding reality around us: “I knocked at her bedroom door once, twice, three times, then finally without letup, but there was no response; it was then, only then, that I realized that she had left me for good.”

The need to clearly mark in our minds the sequence and frequency of occurrences is so crucial that the English language has evolved scores of adverbs of time and of frequency. Take a look at the following short list:

Past adverbs of time:  “ago,” “after,” “already,” “once,” “before,” “beforehand,” “when,” “recently,” “then,” “since,” “since then,” “yesterday,” “last week.” “last month,” “last quarter,” and “last year.”

Present adverbs of time:  “now,” “nowadays,” “lately,” “of late,” “while,” “at this moment,” “at last,” “today,” and “tonight.”

Future adverbs of time:  “when,” “presently,” “soon,” “tomorrow,” “yet,” “as soon as possible” (ASAP), “later,” “after,” “immediately,” “heretofore,” “hereafter,” “henceforth,” “next day,” “next week,” “next month,” and “next year.”

Adverbs for continuous or repeated actions:  “by and by,” “again,” “occasionally,” “until,” “till,” “while,” “forever,” “always,” “off and on,” “continually,” “continuously,” “often,” “at length,” and “perpetually.”

Adverbs of frequency:  “rarely,” “seldom,” “frequently,” “sometimes,” “oftentimes,” “now and then,” “never,” “once,” “twice,” “thrice,” “daily,” “nightly,” “weekly,” “monthly,” “quarterly,” “annually,” and “seasonally.”

These adverbs of time and adverbs of frequency are, of course, not the only ones we can find in the language. We can actually create hundreds more by using them as basic building blocks, and the more effectively we can make them work with the tenses, the better we can understand the things that happen in our lives and the clearer we can communicate them to others.

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From the book Give Your English the Winning Edge by Jose A. Carillo © 2009 by the author, © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

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