Use parallel structure for unparalleled sentences

Source: photo taken by the author.

Source: photo taken by the author's
 father-in-law, Benedict Caccia.

Sometimes a writer needs to think like an architect. Surely, you've seen photographs of classical architecture, with its emphasis on balance and order. If two Doric columns are placed to the left of a doorway, then you can bet two identical columns will be to the right of the doorway too. Then there is modern architecture, where the patterns are more wild and free, like an imitation of nature itself. To continue this analogy, modern architecture makes a good model for some types of contemporary creative writing -- free-verse poetry and postmodern fiction, for example. But if you're writing the traditional college essay, then classical architecture provides a more appropriate model.

This brings us to the idea of parallel structure in writing. Remember the matching Doric columns on either side of the doorway? That same sense of balance applies to sentences and paragraphs too. Here is a simple example: I like to hunt, to fish, and camping. Clearly, this sentence irritates the ear because the final third of the sentence fails to fulfill expectations created by the first two-thirds. Two infinitive verbs (to hunt, to fish) are followed by a gerund (-ing verb), disrupting the anticipated sequence. The sentence above is out of parallel, and should be corrected by writing either I like to hunt, to fish, and to camp or I like hunting, fishing, and camping.

A much more sophisticated example comes from the classic book Walden, when Henry David Thoreau explains why he chose to seclude himself in a cabin in the woods:

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

Now look at the same passage below with the relevant words and phrases highlighted that tie the passage together and create parallel structure.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

Thoreau employs the parallel structure of "to [verb] … and [verb]” as in “to cut … and shave” in order to artfully bind his lengthy sentence together. Now it’s your turn to try and write a sentence so skillfully!

Of course, Thoreau's honesty and insight make his writing memorable more than any grammar or technical tricks. That's why Walden, published in the 1850s, still speaks to us in 2014 and continues to be a work of unparalleled power and elegance.

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.