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Try This 18.5: Find Examples of Parallelism

List all of the examples of parallelism in the following famous passage from the beginning of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Remember that parallelism can occur with clauses and phrases, especially prepositional phrases. You might find it useful to review the entries for these three terms in the glossary in Chapter 19. After you have completed your list, what do you notice about the way that the parallel structures accumulate? And what is the effect of the placement and phrasing of these parallelisms? In other words, try to describe how this famous passage develops stylistically.

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When you employ parallelism in revising for style, there is one grammatical rule to obey. It is important to avoid what is known as faulty parallelism, which occurs when the items that are parallel in content are not placed in the same grammatical form.

Faulty: To study hard for four years and then getting ignored once they enter the job market is a hard thing for many recent college graduates to accept.

Revised: To study hard for four years and then to get ignored once they enter the job market is a hard thing for many recent college graduates to accept.

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Try This 18.6: Correct Errors in Parallelism

Rewrite the following examples of faulty parallelism using correct parallel structure. In the last of these sentences, you will need to contemplate the thinking behind it as well as its form.

The problems with fast food restaurants include the way workers are exploited, eating transfatty acids, and that the food can damage your liver.

Venus Williams likes to play tennis and also designing clothes.

In the 1960s the use of drugs and being a hippie were ways for some people to let society know their political views and that they were alienated from the mainstream.

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Two Powerful Forms of Parallelism: Antithesis and Chiasmus

One particularly useful form of balance that parallel structure accommodates is known as antithesis (from the Greek word for “opposition”), a conjoining of contrasting ideas. Here, the pattern sets one thing against another thing, as in the following example:

Where bravura failed to settle the negotiations, tact and patience succeeded.

“Failed” is balanced antithetically against “succeeded,” as “bravura” against “tact and patience.” Antithesis commonly takes the form of “if not x, at least y” or “not x, but y.”

Another specialized form of parallelism known as chiasmus is a rhetorical pattern that organizes elements in an ABBA structure. The most famous chiasmus known to most Americans comes from a speech by John F. Kennedy: “Ask not [A] what your country can do for you [B]; ask what you [B] can do for your country [A].”

Note how this form also uses antithesis—the JFK example moves from “ask not” to “ask”—which is why it is known as a form of inverted parallelism, the second half of the expression balanced against the first, with the parts reversed. You can more easily remember the term chiasmus once you realize that it derives from the Greek letter chi, meaning X, as that is the shape of the AB -> BA structure. Here is another example of chiasmus from Matthew 19:30: “But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.” The effect is memorable.

As you write, and especially as you revise for style, search for opportunities to place sentence elements in parallel structure. Remember that parallelism can occur with clauses and phrases, especially prepositional phrases. Often, the parallels will be hidden in the sentences of your draft, but they can be brought out with a minimum of labor. After you’ve acquired the habit of casting your thinking in parallel structures, they will rapidly