Two or more words, phrases, or clauses that are similar in length and grammatical form. Also called parallelism. By convention, items in a series appear in parallel grammatical form: a noun is listed with other nouns, an -ing form with other -ing forms, and so on. Failure to express such items in similar grammatical form is called faulty parallelism.
Parallel structure means using the same pattern of words to show that two or more ideas have the same level of importance. This can happen at the word, phrase, or clause level. The usual way to join parallel structures is with the use of coordinating conjunctions such as "and" or "or". Examples: Not Parallel:
Mary likes hiking, swimming, and to ride a bicycle. Parallel: Mary likes hiking, swimming, and riding a bicycle.
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