It's a Balancing Act

Humans like balance, matching pieces, orderly sets, and identifiable patterns. When it comes to the subject of parallelism, the same holds true. Words flow smoothly together in lists, compound verbs, compound subjects, etc., when they are parallel.

For example, “running, jumping, and sitting” all end with “ing” and might describe favorite sports…well, maybe not the last one. If there is an oddity - running, jumping, and sit – the lack of parallelism actually does jump out at the reader because there is discordance in the pattern.

“Kindness and mercy” might be used as a parallel compound subject of a sentence since both words are nouns. However, “kindness and merciful” would jar the senses as a compound subject because they are not parallel. “Kindness” is a noun. “Merciful” is an adjective.

A memory device that is useful to remember parallelism is the following: “He came, he saw, he conquered.”

See you next time the breeze is cool, the sun is up, and the waves roll into view! My next entry is coming soon. ‘Til then, hang ten!