ClearTips: Edit yourself

9. Parallel Constructions

Words and groups of words that do the same work are easier to read if they aresimilar (parallel) in grammatical construction.

NOT PARALLEL
PARALLEL
Aides on Capitol Hill talk about running the country and the manipulation of constituents.
CHANGE TO
Aides on Capitol Hill talk about running the country and manipulating constituents.
Many Americans think that the media are attentive to insignificant details but that deeper issues are ignored.
CHANGE TO
Many Americans think that the media are attentive to insignificant details but not to deeper issues.

One red flag for the sameness of function is a coordinating conjunction—an and, but, for, or nor—which by definition joins words, phrases, and clauses that have the same function or similar functions. Another red flag is a pair of correlative conjunctions: bothand; eitheror; whetheror; not onlybut also. The words and groups of words that follow each part of the pair should be parallel in construction. The construction of sentences presenting similar facts or ideas should be parallel, too, as should any recurring sentence parts.

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