Parallelism Worksheet Answers and Tips

This document provides examples of faulty parallelism in sentences and offers tips to correct it. Faulty parallelism occurs when items in a list are not grammatically similar, making the meaning unclear. To fix it, one can rearrange words, use semicolons to connect sentences, or add parentheses. Long, complex sentences are most prone to this error. The document demonstrates corrections through revising sample sentences and emphasizes making list items parallel for clarity.

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Parallelism Worksheet Answers and Tips

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FAULTY PARALLEL ANSWERS

How to Correct?
There is more than one way to correct the sentences above and that is true for faulty sentences in your own papers.
While just changing the faulty verbs is sometimes the answer, at time you need to completely re-do the sentence by
 Re-arranging the words.
 Using a semi-colon to make two sentences connected together.
 Putting extra information in parenthesis.

Sample Answers
Here are some sample answers to the exercises above with the parallel elements in bold:
1. The English teacher had unpleasant, nasal tone, but conveyed the information clearly and humorously.
2. The coach told his players to get plenty of water, not eat sugary snacks and be sure they get plenty of
sleep.
3. Benefits of coaching include: knowing each player, helping that player improve and seeing that person
succeed in life.
4. At the party, my sister helped us make the cake, gathered the kids for games, cleaned up the mess,
and drove some kids home.
5. Exercises I enjoy doing are running marathons, swimming lengths in a pool, riding my bicycle in the park
and walking along the trails in a forest.
6. We must either change the laws about drunk driving or start enforcing them more strictly.
7. The protesters gathered outside, held signs, started shouting loudly and stopped the speaker from being
heard.
8. My sister-in-law loves fad diets and has tried: eating only meat, consuming nothing but
rice, drinking smoothies in the morning (while not restricting anything else), and fasting 12 hours every day.
9. To my horror, my wedding dress looked stained, torn, and wrinkled.
10. Our latest math instructor was enthusiastic, joking, and demanding; in fact, she failed half of the class.

Sample Answers for Harder Exercises

1. Drunk drivers are thoughtlessly taking the lives of other people in their own hands, risking their own
lives, thinking only about their own pleasure and fun, and not considering the consequences of their actions.
2. Police enforcement is responsible for serving the community, safeguarding the property of people in that
community, protecting the innocent from crimes, and ensuring that all people's constitutional rights are
respected.
3. When my husband takes another job in California, I will fly out to find a house (while my mom comes here
to take care of the kids) and then stay in Texas to pack up our house and let the children finish up their school
year, then drive to California with all the kids while the moving van takes all of our stuff.
4. In order to convey the information correctly, the police officer spoke loudly to the crowd, told people
where they should stand, repeated the information to help people remember, and gestured.
5. This afternoon, my roommate and I are going to eat lunch at my favorite pizza place downtown, study in
the library until our friend Sandy is free from work, meet up with our Tri Delta sorority sisters back at our
dorm, and binge-watch the latest Netflix episodes of our favorite show while eating the gourmet popcorn my
mom just sent me.

Why Does It Happen?

Of course, you may read some of those incorrect sentences and think, "why would a person mix those up? They
don't make sense!" Most of the time, faulty parallelism is less common with simple sentences (although even my
college students make that mistake sometimes!). Generally, the biggest problem comes when people are writing
complex sentences with longer phrases in the lists. Here is a typical example:
Faulty: Instead of criticizing the government, people should begin to be involved in the process by making sure they
are registered to vote, start petitioning for causes they really believe in, learning about the issues and researching
the actual situation in order to learn the impact of legislation, both past and current proposals, on causes they
believe in strongly, and by going to meetings for their party representatives so that they can really find out if those
people understand and believe in the issues they care about and have the ability to represent those issues clearly
and forcefully, working at polling places and registering people to vote.

Confused? Me Too!
I get these sorts of sentences in every single set of papers I grade. So if you write sentences like this, you aren't
alone. The good news is that when you are writing complicated sentences like this, it means you are thinking
complicated thoughts and have a lot of good ideas. That is the reason that correcting this grammar issue is
important! You can't persuade your reader to agree with you if they can't understand what you are saying. Moreover,
while your instructor might make a valiant attempt to wade through your sentence to discover your meaning, most
readers would just give up and move on.
The bad news is that you will need to learn how to write these sentences correctly and clearly in order to persuade
your reader with your good ideas. That is the reason that correcting this grammar issue is important! You can't
persuade your reader to agree with you if they can't understand what you are saying. Moreover, while your instructor
might make a valiant attempt to wade through your sentence to discover your meaning, most readers would just give
up and move on.

Sample Revisions of Difficult Sentences

Here are two sample revisions. The first one does a simple list, using "ing" verbs throughout to make sure the list is
parallel:
Correct Sample Revision: Instead of criticizing the government, people should get involved in voting in every
election, registering others to vote, petitioning for causes they believe in, researching about issues, learning the
impact of past legislation, going to meetings for candidates, evaluating the character of people running for
office, analyzing whether a candidate can present issues forcefully, and working at polling places to make sure the
votes are secure and fair.

Notice in the above sample that I do not use any conjunctions (and, or, but, so, yet) except in the last item (and
working at...). If you do use conjunctions in a list, you need to use semicolons in between the items of the list. In
fact, I would strongly encourage you to do that! Long lists like the ones above are tedious to read, and you can make
a much more interesting sentence. Here is an example:

Correct Sample Revision Using Semicolons: Instead of criticizing the government, people should get
involved: making sure they are registered to vote, and registering others; petitioning for causes they believe
in; researching about issues in order to learn the impact of past and current legislation; going to meetings for
their party representatives in order to evaluate the candidate's character as well as how well they can present issues
clearly and forcefully; and, finally, working at polling places to make sure the process goes smoothly.

The video below gives a good explanation of how to use semicolons in a list. (YOU CAN FIND THE VIDEO, ALL
THE INFO I’VE LISTED HERE, AND OTHER HELPFUL ITEMS ON THIS WEBSITE:
https://owlcation.com/humanities/Easy-Faulty-Parallelism-Examples-and-Exercises

Here are some tips for how to check your own writing for faulty parallelism:
1. Look for long sentences. Those are often the ones that have a lot of ideas which may not be written
correctly. Mark those to re-read and check.
2. Look for lists in your sentences. Circle the first words in each list. Are they the same type of verb, noun or
adjective?
3. Read your paper out loud (or ask someone else to read it). If you stumble when reading a sentence, chances
are that sentence isn't written as clearly as it could be and may have faulty parallelism.