By using parallel structures, you may add balance to your writing. Parallelisms can add a rhythm to your writing, an effect which is quite useful to speech writers. Consider the words of Winston Churchhill during one of his World War II speeches to the British public.
". . .We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France; we shall fight on the seas and the oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air; we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches; we shall fight on the landing grounds; we shall fight in the fields and in the streets; we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender . . ."
Churchhill favored using parallel items in a series. You can also use coordinate elements to make your sentence parallel.
Whatever you place after one element (word, phrase, clause) must also follow the second element. ex. Jerome is both an architect and a concert pianist. She was not only scared but tired.
Parallelism is a very effective method of adding sentence variety to your themes. The punctuation is not difficult. If you have a series of items, put a comma after each one. (The comma before the last item is optional.) ex. The stranger was short, fat, and ugly. (The comma after fat is optional.) With coordinate elements there is no internal punctuation for the parallelisms, but compound and complex sentences must be punctuated correctly.
Directions: Combine the following groups of sentences into one sentence using parallel items in a series or coordinate elements.