Parallelism is one of the most useful and flexible rhetorical techniques. It refers to any structure which brings together parallel elements, be these nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, or larger structures. Done well, parallelism imparts grace and power to passage:
The prince's strength is also his weakness; his self-reliance is also isolation.
In Machiavelli's world, Sheldon Wolin observes, moral ends have been replaced by ironies; answers have been replaced by questions.
The characters are all watching one another, forming theories about one another, listening, contriving . . . .
One side sees Lincoln as a bold and shrewd leader, sincerely committed to abolishing slavery; the other sees him as an opportunistic politician, concerned only to defend the union in any way possible.
Problems with faulty parallelism are very common, because many people know （or think they know） what they want to say, and don't scrutinize what they actually write. In the following examples the parallel elements in the revisions are emphasized:
ORIGINAL REVISION
Someone acquiring knowledge is similar to finding a new path in a dense forest.
Acquiring knowledge is similar to finding a new path in a dense forest.
Machiavelli advocates relying on one's own strength, leaving as little to chance as possible, and the need to get rid of sentimental attachments.
Machiavelli advocates relying on one's own strength, leaving as little to chance as possible, and ridding oneself of sentimental attachments.
Touchstone satirizes courtly manners, woos Audrey, and he tries to avoid marriage.
Touchstone satirizes courtly manners, woos Audrey, and tries to avoid marriage.
One frequent source of trouble is nested lists—when one sublist occurs within another list. The writer of this sentence lost track and thought the final comma signaled the last item in the main list:
Open faculty positions are advertised in all regional city and community newspapers, in national outlets such as the Higher Education Journal, the publications of the Hispanic American Association of Colleges and Universities, and the African American Association of Colleges and Universities.
The trick is to recognize that this is actually a nested list and maintain parallelism within each list:
Open faculty positions are advertised in all regional city and community newspapers and in national outlets such as the Higher Education Journal and the publications of the Hispanic American Association of Colleges and Universities and the African American Association of Colleges and Universities.
The list is technically okay, but its complexity makes it a bit hard to read. One could rearrange the list to emphasize different elements and allow some pauses.
Open faculty positions are advertised in all regional city and community newspapers, in national outlets such as the Higher Education Journal, and in targeted outlets like the publications of the Hispanic American Association of Colleges and Universities and the African American Association of Colleges and Universities.
Note that among other changes the revision adds the word targeted, which makes it easier to get the list's logic. As ever, revision is equal parts rewriting and rethinking.
One other problem with parallelism is fairly common, though this is a stylistic rather than a grammatical lapse. Writers often repeat too much in the parallel elements, detracting from parallelism's economical elegance:
ORIGINAL REVISION
Socrates led a private life, as opposed to a public life.
Socrates led a private rather than a public life.
Parallelism can be employed in many different ways. One spin is inversion or chiasmus, in which parallel elements are carefully reversed for emphasis. A famous example comes from President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address （1961）:
Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.
Inversion often gains power by focusing attention on the ends of sentences, where readers and listeners naturally pause. Kennedy's example shows this, as does the next example, from a 19th-century religious leader defending his honesty despite his change of religion:
I have changed in many things: in this I have not.
By putting the prepositional phrase in this at the beginning of the second clause, the speaker is able to end on that emphatic final not.
The prince's strength is also his weakness; his self-reliance is also isolation.
In Machiavelli's world, Sheldon Wolin observes, moral ends have been replaced by ironies; answers have been replaced by questions.
The characters are all watching one another, forming theories about one another, listening, contriving . . . .
One side sees Lincoln as a bold and shrewd leader, sincerely committed to abolishing slavery; the other sees him as an opportunistic politician, concerned only to defend the union in any way possible.
Problems with faulty parallelism are very common, because many people know （or think they know） what they want to say, and don't scrutinize what they actually write. In the following examples the parallel elements in the revisions are emphasized:
ORIGINAL REVISION
Someone acquiring knowledge is similar to finding a new path in a dense forest.
Acquiring knowledge is similar to finding a new path in a dense forest.
Machiavelli advocates relying on one's own strength, leaving as little to chance as possible, and the need to get rid of sentimental attachments.
Machiavelli advocates relying on one's own strength, leaving as little to chance as possible, and ridding oneself of sentimental attachments.
Touchstone satirizes courtly manners, woos Audrey, and he tries to avoid marriage.
Touchstone satirizes courtly manners, woos Audrey, and tries to avoid marriage.
One frequent source of trouble is nested lists—when one sublist occurs within another list. The writer of this sentence lost track and thought the final comma signaled the last item in the main list:
Open faculty positions are advertised in all regional city and community newspapers, in national outlets such as the Higher Education Journal, the publications of the Hispanic American Association of Colleges and Universities, and the African American Association of Colleges and Universities.
The trick is to recognize that this is actually a nested list and maintain parallelism within each list:
Open faculty positions are advertised in all regional city and community newspapers and in national outlets such as the Higher Education Journal and the publications of the Hispanic American Association of Colleges and Universities and the African American Association of Colleges and Universities.
The list is technically okay, but its complexity makes it a bit hard to read. One could rearrange the list to emphasize different elements and allow some pauses.
Open faculty positions are advertised in all regional city and community newspapers, in national outlets such as the Higher Education Journal, and in targeted outlets like the publications of the Hispanic American Association of Colleges and Universities and the African American Association of Colleges and Universities.
Note that among other changes the revision adds the word targeted, which makes it easier to get the list's logic. As ever, revision is equal parts rewriting and rethinking.
One other problem with parallelism is fairly common, though this is a stylistic rather than a grammatical lapse. Writers often repeat too much in the parallel elements, detracting from parallelism's economical elegance:
ORIGINAL REVISION
Socrates led a private life, as opposed to a public life.
Socrates led a private rather than a public life.
Parallelism can be employed in many different ways. One spin is inversion or chiasmus, in which parallel elements are carefully reversed for emphasis. A famous example comes from President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address （1961）:
Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.
Inversion often gains power by focusing attention on the ends of sentences, where readers and listeners naturally pause. Kennedy's example shows this, as does the next example, from a 19th-century religious leader defending his honesty despite his change of religion:
I have changed in many things: in this I have not.
By putting the prepositional phrase in this at the beginning of the second clause, the speaker is able to end on that emphatic final not.