Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [260]
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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 become a staple of your stylistic repertoire, making your prose more graceful, clear, and logically connected.
PERIODIC AND CUMULATIVE SENTENCES: TWO EFFECTIVE SENTENCE SHAPES
The shape of a sentence governs the way it delivers information. The order of clauses, especially the placement of the main clause, affects what the sentence means.
There are two common sentence shapes defined by the location of their main clauses; these are known as periodic and cumulative sentences. The periodic sentence is built on suspense and delay: it puts maximum emphasis on the way the sentence ends. The cumulative sentence aims for