Parallelism refers to such sentence structure where grammatical equity is ensured. It means that when you have more than one item on the list, these items should follow the same grammatical category. If there is a noun or noun phrase as an item, all the items should be nouns or noun phrases. For example:
Ø I love reading, writing, and playing cricket.
Here, “reading,” “writing,” and “playing” belong to the same grammatical category which is technically called the gerund. Now look at the examples of infinitives:
Ø I love to play cricket, to read and to write.
Here, “to read,” “to play,” and “to write” are infinitive verbs.
One thing you need to know is that you can avoid the preposition “to” from the rest of the elements except the first one. You can say:
Ø I love to read, play and write.
You can use “to” either with the first element or with all the elements. You cannot use “to” randomly.
Ø He spoke brilliantly and with confidence.
Here, “brilliantly” is an adverb, and “confidence” is a noun. So, you have violated the rule of parallelism. What is the rule? Parallelism or in a parallel structure, you should follow the same grammatical category. Here, you have one adverb and one noun. So, you have to covert “confidence” into an adverb.
Ø He spoke brilliantly and
confidently.
Here, both “brilliantly and “confidently” belong to the same grammatical category: adverb.
Ø The then East Pakistan had to face social,
political, economical, and cultural exploitation.
The words “social,” “political,” “economical,” and “cultural,” are adjectives.
Ø I know where he was born brought up
and educated.
Ø I know where he was born, where he was brought up, and where he was educated.
Here, I have three clauses, but I have omitted some parts of these clauses. Notice that “where he was” has been used only before the first item and this part has been omitted from the rest of the items. This is what you can do. You can use this clause either with the first one or with all the items.
What is parallelism? Parallelism refers to such sentence structure where you have to ensure equal grammatical category. It means that all the items should belong to the same grammatical category. Why should we learn parallelism? We should learn parallelism because parallelism can make our speech and write-up very rhythmic. You can bring order and harmony to your writing and speech. Another thing you should notice is that you should be good at grammar. You need to know what adjective or adverb is, what participle or gerund is, what infinitive or participle is. So, to understand parallelism, to use parallelism, you must have a very good command of grammar. You can also watch the video on parallelism: