Part 4 - SPECIFIC APPLICATIONS OF THE PARALLELISM RULESThe first two parts of this series strongly emphasized that the basic rule for parallel construction is to never mix grammatical forms when presenting similar or related ideas. A parallel sentence sticks to the same pattern all throughout—all noun forms, all gerund forms, all infinitive forms, or all verb forms as the case may be. That way the ideas being presented come across much more clearly and cohesively.
This time we will take up another very important parallel construction rule:
a parallel structure that begins with a noun clause should sustain that pattern all the way. Recall now that a
noun clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a predicate (as in “we should obey the law”), as opposed to a
phrase, which is a group of words that doesn’t have either a subject or a predicate (as in “to obey the law” or “obeying the law”). When a sentence doesn’t sustain the noun clause pattern, or when any of its noun clauses shifts from the active to the passive voice or the other way around, the parallelism falls apart and the outcome is a disjointed sentence.
Take this sentence with 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 regularly, and t
o submit their term papers on time.” Parallelism is not attained because while the first two elements—“they should aim for perfect attendance” and “they should always do their assigned homework”—are both noun clauses, the third element—“to submit their term papers on time”—isn’t a noun clause but an infinitive phrase.
To make that sentence perfectly parallel and more readable, the third element must also be rendered as a noun clause—“they should submit their term papers on time.” That way our tongue and mind will no longer be unpleasantly assaulted upon reaching the third element—“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 that 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.
The parallelism of sentences with serial noun clauses can also be ruined when any of the noun clauses takes a different voice from the other clauses, say
the passive voice instead of the active voice. Experience how unpleasant it is to read the following mixed-voice 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
a vicious demolition job would be mounted against it by her political detractors.”
Here, the first two noun clauses—“that majority of the lower house would welcome the planned charter change” and “that most of the senators would fiercely oppose it”—are both in the active voice, but the third noun clause—“that 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 noun clause also take the active voice—“that her political detractors would mount a vicious demolition job against it” instead of its current passive voice. The outcome is this more forthright and 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.”
We will take up next week more ways of using parallelism to enhance the clarity and readability of our writing.
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This reprises and updates the author’s 2006 series in his English Plain and Simple columns on parallelism as a mark of good writing.This essay, 2,134th of the series, appears in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the January 19, 2023 digital edition of The Manila Times
, ©2023 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Read this essay in
The Manila Times:
Parallelism as a mark of good writing – 3(Next week:
Parallelism as a mark of good writing - 4) January 26, 2023
Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
