33Let’s try one more comma series example.
The teacher was encouraged to grade her papers quickly, meticulously, and in a fair manner.
Identify your comma series and underline the words that need to be parallel:
The teacher was encouraged to grade her papers quickly, meticulously, and in a fair manner.
- in a fair manner is NOT PARALLEL to the adverbs quickly and meticulously.
Change to fairly.
Revise to a parallel sentence: The teacher was encouraged to grade her papers quickly, meticulously, and fairly.
Below is a list of common linking words that often indicate a parallelism error might be lurking.
than and but not only....but also both...and whether....or either...or
Let’s see these hint words at play:
A basketball player must be able to dribble the ball and shooting a basket.
Let’s analyze the sentence:
A basketball player must be able to dribble the ball and shooting a basket.
“To dribble” is the infinitive form of the verb and “shooting” is the gerund form of the verb. That’s not parallel!
Change shooting to to shoot to fix.
Revised sentence: A basketball player must be able to dribble the ball and to shoot a basket.
Whenever you see a gerund underlined all you need to ask is, “should it be an
infinitive instead?” Likewise, when an infinitive is underlined ask, “should it be
a gerund instead?” We’ll refer to this as the Gerund/Infinitive Switch.
Here’s another one:
The MBA candidate was applying not only to Harvard, but also Stanford.
Can you spot the error?
The MBA candidate was applying not only to Harvard, but also to Stanford.
- there is a “to” after the “not only” so make sure that everything that follows the “but also”
is in the EXACT same form.
Phew! That’s it for verbs! Let’s apply what you have learned to the following drill of Sentence Correction and
Error ID problems. The questions are testing SVA, Verb Tense, or Parallelism.