Parallel universes
Dec. 3rd, 2004 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynWhat’s this? A usage post? You mean she’s finally gone back to doing something useful instead of talking about her stupid life or her stupid fic or that homo car movie? Oui, oui, I have. But it’s a small one this time.
No doubt, if you’ve written an essay for an English class or written fic that a marginally competent beta has edited, you’ve probably come across the term parallelism — as in someone complaining that your sentence isn’t parallel enough. And if you’re like most people, you’re thinking, WTF? Because of course our mind immediately goes off to geometry and we think of two lines running parallel to one another, and what does that have to do with writing?
Actually, a surprising amount. If you have two or more ideas that are similar — or parallel — to each other, they should be written in a parallel grammatical form if you want to craft your most effective sentence. Single words should be balanced with single words, phrases with phrases, clauses with clauses... you get the idea. Diana Hacker in A Writer’s Reference uses these excellent examples:
What you can see in these is that the writers chose a way of expressing their thoughts where each element is like the other. Sometimes when you’re trying to express a thought, just getting it down on paper is hard enough, let alone having it sound elegant and parallel. But if you go back and look at your work later, you can often see where these balances can be struck. Parallelism doesn’t always show its face right away (which unfortunately with fanfic means it doesn’t often get used because of that bizarre rush to postthisstoryrightnowOMGbabieswilldieifitdoesn’tgouprightthissecond!!!), so stepping back and then looking at a sentence later can help you see how to make it parallel.
When you have a series of parallel ideas, you want to balance them out to help your reader along. Text is more awkward to read when the items in a sentence violate the the reader’s expectation that they’ll be phrased similarly.
When you’re pairing ideas, you can make their connection clearer by expressing them in similar grammatical form. This is often what people are criticizing when they tell you that your sentences aren’t parallel. Paired ideas are usually connected thusly: 1) with a coordinating conjunction like and, but, or or; 2) with a pair of correlative conjunctions like either...or or not only... but also; or 3) with a word introducing the comparison, such as than or as.
Coordinating conjunctions link ideas of equal importance, so you’ll see things like and, but, or, nor, for, so, and yet here. If the ideas are parallel in content, people expect you to put them that way grammatically, too:
At Sunnydale High, magic can result in suspension orbeing expelled expulsion from school.
The government is reducing the budget for interplanetary travel andcut cutting the Stargate exploration program.
The correlative constructions can be a bit trickier, and these often trip up even experienced writers. What you want to check here is that the second half of the sentence matches the first:
The flying broom was not only too long but alsowas too wide, Ron thought.
Here, repeating the “was” creates an unbalanced sentence, since “too long” comes right after “not only” — so you want “too wide” to come directly after “but also.”
Fraser was instructed either to get a cab or to walk into town.
Here you’re using the word “to” in front of “get a cab,” so you want to make sure that the second idea, walking to town, has that “to” in front of it as well.
The hardest one may be comparisons, where you’ll see “than” or “as” used to compare elements. More people seem to experience trouble with this one than with any other parallelism concept:
Illyria finds it easier to deal with Wesley thantalking to talk to anyone else at Wolfram and Hart.
No one could convince Ezra that giving is as much a joy asto receive receiving.
For a lot of you, this stuff just won’t come naturally. The act of writing at all can be hard enough, and throwing something refined like parallelism in can make it even tougher (ack! the burden!). But the extra step of crafting parallel sentences can be worth it in terms of making things easier and just plain nicer for your readers — and then, too, you might not have to listen to smug betas telling you that you lack parallelism.
No doubt, if you’ve written an essay for an English class or written fic that a marginally competent beta has edited, you’ve probably come across the term parallelism — as in someone complaining that your sentence isn’t parallel enough. And if you’re like most people, you’re thinking, WTF? Because of course our mind immediately goes off to geometry and we think of two lines running parallel to one another, and what does that have to do with writing?
Actually, a surprising amount. If you have two or more ideas that are similar — or parallel — to each other, they should be written in a parallel grammatical form if you want to craft your most effective sentence. Single words should be balanced with single words, phrases with phrases, clauses with clauses... you get the idea. Diana Hacker in A Writer’s Reference uses these excellent examples:
A kiss can be a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation point. — Mistinguett
This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force. — Dorothy Parker
In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current. — Thomas Jefferson
What you can see in these is that the writers chose a way of expressing their thoughts where each element is like the other. Sometimes when you’re trying to express a thought, just getting it down on paper is hard enough, let alone having it sound elegant and parallel. But if you go back and look at your work later, you can often see where these balances can be struck. Parallelism doesn’t always show its face right away (which unfortunately with fanfic means it doesn’t often get used because of that bizarre rush to postthisstoryrightnowOMGbabieswilldieifitdoesn’tgouprightthissecond!!!), so stepping back and then looking at a sentence later can help you see how to make it parallel.
When you have a series of parallel ideas, you want to balance them out to help your reader along. Text is more awkward to read when the items in a sentence violate the the reader’s expectation that they’ll be phrased similarly.
Vampires commonly exhibit the following characteristics: amorality, deadliness, speed, strength, andthey are sensitive to lightphotosensitivity.
Here you want to keep all of these similar one-word descriptions the same, as much as possible. (When you need to break parallelism because you can’t find a suitable way of expressing something so it stays the same, it’s considered best to use your odd element at the end of the list.)
At the Magic Box, Anya is responsible for stocking items, ringing up sales, andsignaturessigning for deliveries.
This keeps everything with the –ing form for the verbs.
After taking the keys from Brian, Dom drove down the wrong side of the road, ran a red light, and went through two stop signs.
You want to add that verb in there at the end to make the three things parallel: drove, ran, went through.
When you’re pairing ideas, you can make their connection clearer by expressing them in similar grammatical form. This is often what people are criticizing when they tell you that your sentences aren’t parallel. Paired ideas are usually connected thusly: 1) with a coordinating conjunction like and, but, or or; 2) with a pair of correlative conjunctions like either...or or not only... but also; or 3) with a word introducing the comparison, such as than or as.
Coordinating conjunctions link ideas of equal importance, so you’ll see things like and, but, or, nor, for, so, and yet here. If the ideas are parallel in content, people expect you to put them that way grammatically, too:
At Sunnydale High, magic can result in suspension or
The government is reducing the budget for interplanetary travel and
The correlative constructions can be a bit trickier, and these often trip up even experienced writers. What you want to check here is that the second half of the sentence matches the first:
The flying broom was not only too long but also
Here, repeating the “was” creates an unbalanced sentence, since “too long” comes right after “not only” — so you want “too wide” to come directly after “but also.”
Fraser was instructed either to get a cab or to walk into town.
Here you’re using the word “to” in front of “get a cab,” so you want to make sure that the second idea, walking to town, has that “to” in front of it as well.
The hardest one may be comparisons, where you’ll see “than” or “as” used to compare elements. More people seem to experience trouble with this one than with any other parallelism concept:
Illyria finds it easier to deal with Wesley than
No one could convince Ezra that giving is as much a joy as
For a lot of you, this stuff just won’t come naturally. The act of writing at all can be hard enough, and throwing something refined like parallelism in can make it even tougher (ack! the burden!). But the extra step of crafting parallel sentences can be worth it in terms of making things easier and just plain nicer for your readers — and then, too, you might not have to listen to smug betas telling you that you lack parallelism.
