Practical Tips for Writers: Parallelism

As a follow-up to the summer series on writing, this post is the second in a series providing technical advice on issues that graduate students (and others) run into in the revision stage. I’ll address problems I commonly see in drafts of dissertations and theses. For each item covered in the series, it’s important to keep in mind the three guiding principles for writers: genre, process, and audience. 

Genre: Most of the writing I work with follows APA or MLA style guidelines. Additionally, most of my writing students are at American institutions and follow those norms for writing. If your field requires a different style or if you are writing in a different academic context, always defer to that.  

Process: In the first stages of writing, trying to make each sentence perfect will only slow you down. The tips in this series are directed at the revision stage.   

Audience: The goal of writing is for your argument to be clear to your reader. Conventions like punctuation and table construction help guide your reader smoothly through your argument.  Sometimes, for clarity’s sake, you might choose to break a rule. That’s okay – these are conventions, not the first table of the Law. Just remember the goal, and make sure that when you depart from convention, it’s on purpose and for the right reason. (Laziness is rarely the right reason.) 

Knowing Where You Are

When I was in journalism school, a professor told our class of eager reporters that when we mention locations, we should always make sure that our readers feel like they know where they are. So, in my master’s thesis, an article I wrote about small towns, I introduced a town with the words:

But 28 miles south of Sibley on Highway 47 is a town whose location has given it a very different look. 

Unless my readers happened to be from Central Illinois, mentioning Sibley or Highway 47 didn’t really give them any helpful information about where the town was. But those kinds of directional markers make readers feel situated—and satisfied.

What Is Parallelism? 

Parallelism is like that. Before I explain why, I’ll engage in another activity important for graduate work, which is to conceptualize parallelism (that is, I’ll tell you how I’m going to be using the word).

Parallelism is a rhetorical device by which related words, phrases, clauses, and other grammatical units have a matching structure. Here’s an example:

The New Deal sought to provide immediate relief for the unemployed, stimulate economic recovery through government investment, and reform financial institutions to prevent future crises.

The phrases “provide immediate relief for the unemployed,” “stimulate economic recovery through government investment,” and “reform financial institutions to prevent future crises” all begin with a verb form (they are actually each the second half of an infinitive that starts with “to,” but we won’t go there), then an adjective, then a noun, then a phrase. Nice, neat, satisfying, parallel.

Here’s an example of the same sentence, without parallelism:

The New Deal aimed to provide immediate relief for the unemployed, government investment was used to stimulate economic recovery, and reforming financial institutions was done to prevent future crises.

That sentence is not exactly wrong, but notice how much of a struggle it is to read. The sentence lacks rhythm and flow; therefore, it is more difficult to understand what the author is trying to say. (I also really want to stick a semicolon after “unemployed,” but that won’t solve the problem.) When I read the first sentence, I feel like I know where I am; when I read the second sentence, I feel lost.

Parallelism for Clarity

In the world of graduate writing, the main purpose of parallelism is clarity. APA 7 notes that parallelism is important in a series (like the previous example) or a list. The manual also advises us to look for parallelism when using pairs of coordinating conjunctions (e.g. both . . . and; neither . . . nor). For example:

The reform movement sought to address both the economic disparities affecting the working class and the social injustices faced by marginalized communities.  

The parallel structure after the words “both” and “and” helps communicate that the ideas are related and have equal importance.

I’m not going to belabor the examples here; websites like Purdue Owl have many sample sentences if you want to read more. My goal is to encourage you to be aware of parallelism and to start looking for it in your writing. More than looking, though, you need to listen.

Which brings us to the next point.

Parallelism for Beauty

Parallelism is helpful for the reader because it sounds right. The pleasing flow of a parallel sentence aids clarity because it allows the reader’s mind to move away from decoding the structure of the sentence and move toward a focus on meaning. So, the best way to read for parallelism is to read with your ear. If a sentence sounds awkward or confusing, maybe the problem is that the related elements are not parallel. You don’t have to understand the syntactical structure of that second sentence about the New Deal to know that it just sounds wrong.

Because of its relation to sound, parallelism is a common device in speeches and in poetry. Here’s a famous example from Ecclesiastes 3:

Now, a dissertation is not a poem (although I once wrote a biology report in rhyming couplets). But there is no reason a dissertation can’t be enjoyable to read, as well as clear and organized. The other reason I mention beauty is that reading good writing, whether poetry or prose, is the best way to develop an ear that will allow you to produce parallelism with a minimum of effort.

Parallels Beyond Words

Parallelism as a rhetorical device focuses on the structure of sentences or lists. But the principle of making sure readers know where they are has broader application. As you are writing (and especially as you are revising), look for other areas where you can add balance and set your reader up for fulfilled expectations. For example, let’s say you are going to describe the elements of the stages of concern that people face when they must adopt an innovation. Your opening sentence might be:

Hall and Hord (2015) identified the stages of concern as unconcerned, informational, personal, management, consequence, collaboration, and refocusing.

Then the next sections of your paper should elaborate upon each stage in that order. If you start with collaboration, your reader will immediately be confused, because the list you provided set up an expectation that “unconcerned” should come first. (Incidentally, I have always disliked the stage names in this model, precisely because “unconcerned” is not parallel with the others. Despite that, it’s a great model if you’re interested in change theory.)

In the same vein, you can provide orienting parallels to your reader by restating your research question at key points and reminding the reader how the next topic for discussion relates to the central point of the study.

The Benefits of Making Life Easier for the Reader

Writing a thesis or dissertation is hard work, but so is reading one. In his book On Writing Well, William Zinsser describes the reader as a distractable bird, who might at any moment decide that reading what you have written is too much work and just fly away. Using parallelism and parallel organization to reduce that work can be the difference between an annoyed committee member and an interested one. And, because readers are human, you know that an interested committee member is the one you want at your defense.

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