faulty parallelism

Sentence structure is parallel when a series of similar items all share the same grammatical structure—for example, all are nouns or verbs or phrases. Writers use parallelism to help readers see connections between ideas and to emphasize particular points.

But it is easy to make mistakes when trying to use parallelism in your writing. Faulty parallelism occurs when items in a series do not have the same grammatical structure.

Below are examples of sentences with faulty parallelism, followed by their corrections:

• Faulty: I like to spend my winter holiday skating, skiing, and I enjoy snowboarding as well.
  Correct: I like to spend my winter holiday skating, skiing and snowboarding. [3 gerunds]

• Faulty: The sisters bought shoes, bags and then picked up a coat each.
  Correct: The sisters bought shoes, bags and coats. [3 nouns]

• Faulty: Sylvain travelled by plane, boat and by train.
  Correct: Sylvain travelled by plane, by boat and by train. [3 phrases]
  Correct: Sylvain travelled by plane, boat and train. [3 nouns]

• Faulty: The maid has vacuumed the carpet, made the bed and has cleaned the bathroom.
  Correct: The maid has vacuumed the carpet, made the bed and cleaned the bathroom. [3 past participles]