Parallelism

Parallelism is just a fancy way of saying that things need to be consistent.

The easiest way to show you what we mean is to show you a good example of bad parallelism:

Bad example

My dog’s favorite activities are running and to jump.

In this sentence, we have two elements (the dog’s favorite activities) sitting next to each other. Both of these elements are identified as “activities” and then they are named.

• running
• to jump

The problem is that when you do that, you should use the same grammatical structure. In other words, it doesn’t matter if you choose single adjectives, participial phrases, or even whole independent clauses. Even if you don’t know what any of those things are, the idea is the same: use the same grammatical unit whenever you group elements.

Corrected examples

My dog’s favorite activities are running and jumping.

My dog’s favorite activities are to run and to jump.

We’ve fixed it! It doesn’t matter if we use the -ing way or the to + verb way; as long as they’re the same, we’re good.

Use the following steps to get these questions right on test day:

1. Identify which elements are being set next to each other and compared.
2. Identify which answer choice makes those elements the same grammatical setup.

Example

Now, see if you can find the problem:

Making small talk with coworkers before a meeting and how to prepare a quality spreadsheet are among my strengths in the office.

A. NO CHANGE
B. Making small talk with coworkers, before a meeting, and how to prepare
C. How to make small talk with coworkers before a meeting and how to prepare
D. How to make small talk with coworkers before a meeting and preparing

Do you know the answer?

Whether you answered it correctly or not, let’s talk through it.

The “and” between long phrases indicates that those two elements are being grouped. So we have “making small talk with coworkers” and “how to prepare a quality spreadsheet” as the dual subjects of this sentence with the verb “are.” We need to make them have the same grammatical construction.

As written in the question, the first element begins with an -ing phrase, while the second element starts with a “how to” construction. So, which of the answer choices adjusts the elements to have the same grammatical construction?

The correct choice is C. How to make small talk with coworkers before a meeting and how to prepare. This is tricky because it would actually be preferable, because of the concise rule, to make both elements the -ing direction, but that’s not any of the options in the answer choices. The only one that makes them both the same is to make them both the “how to” version.