Grammar and Usage: Parallelism, Basic Sentence Structures, Verbals, and Shifts in Person

Parallelism: Items in a list should have the same structure.

"I like to read, write, and watch movies." <--This is parallel because every item is a "to ___" verb. "I like to read, write, and watching movies." <-- This is a parallelism error because "watching" is not the same form as "to read" and "write".

"He is a specialist in American literature, film, and popular culture." <--This is parallel because every item is a noun.

"He is a specialist in American literature, film, and knows a lot about popular culture, too." <--This is a parallelism error because "knows a lot about popular culture" is not a noun. (If you add 'he' after 'and,' it might be okay, but the information would be a new independent clause, not an item in a list.)

"I like puppies when they sleep, when they eat, and when they look at you with their sad puppy eyes after they have done something wrong." <--Despite the last long item, this is parallel because every item is a dependent clause.

"I like puppies when they sleep, when they eat, and apologetic puppies." <-- This is a parallelism error because the last item is a noun, not a dependent clause.

--Parallelism also is a style issue. You should express parallel ideas in parallel form. "Play is easy. Work is hard." <--This is parallel. (The ideas are parallel because you are comparing 'work' and 'play'.)

"Play is easy. It is harder to work." <--This is not parallel.

Basic Sentence Structures:

Subject-Verb-Object: "He read the book."

Subject-Verb (No Object): "He sings." (Use a verb that does not need an object. Ex. "What does Jay Chou do for a living?" "He sings." "What does your dad do for a living?" "He works."

Subject-Verb-Description Phrase: "He is nice."

--You can add dependent clauses and prepostional phrases to this structures easily: "He hit the ball to the right field wall." "He works when he feels like it." "He is friendly when he wants to be." "He works at the Taipower Building." You should try to use basic sentence structures as often as possible to make your ideas clear.

Verbals: Verbals are verbs that act like a subject or object in a sentence.

"Skiing is fun," 'Skiing' is a verbal because it is the subject of the sentence ('is' is the verb).

"I like playing basketball." 'Playing' is a verbal because it is part of the object.

Shifts in Person:

When you speak in the abstract (not about a specific person), you need to use the same person. A 'shift in person' is an example of bad writing.

Example: "If a person makes a mistake, they should apologize."
'a person' is 3rd person singular; 'they' is 3rd person plural. The sentence has a shift in person.

It should be: "If people make a mistake, they should apologize." Both persons are 3rd person plural.

Shifts in person often happen in a paragraph: "Students should manage their time well. He should wake up early and study at the same time every day. You will do well in school if you manage your time." There are three different persons in this paragraph. All three should be the same person. See if you can correct it.

When you write in the abstract, you should use either 1st person plural: "We should study harder." or 3rd person plural: "Students should study harder."