71 Practice Activities: Parallel Structure
Parallelism
Read the following passage. Correct any errors in parallelism that you find. Remember, non-parallel things are typically grammatically correct, but making things parallel will improve your writing style. Type your correct answer in the text frame below:
“The Bone Wars” refers to a period of intense fossil speculation and discovery in American history (1872–1892). The wars were marked by a heated rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. At one time, Edward and Marsh were amicable: they even named species after each other. Over time, however, their relationship soured, likely due in part to their strong personalities. Cope was known to be pugnacious and possessed a quick temper. Marsh was slower, more methodical, and introverted. Eventually, each of the two paleontologists would resort to underhanded methods to try to out-compete the other in the field, resorting to bribery, theft, and destroying bones.
By the end of the Bone Wars, both Cope and Marsh were financially and socially ruined by their attempts to disgrace each other, but their contributions to science and the field of paleontology were massive. Several of Cope’s and Marsh’s discoveries are the most well-known of dinosaurs: Triceratops, Allosaurus, Diplodocus, and Stegosaurus. Their cumulative discoveries defined the then-emerging field of paleontology. Before Cope’s and Marsh’s discoveries, there were only nine named species of dinosaur in North America. Judging by pure numbers, Marsh “won” the Bone Wars: Cope discovered a total of 56 new dinosaur species, but Marsh had found 80.
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Here are the sentences that have issues with parallelism, as well as suggestions for their revision.
- At one time, Edward and Marsh were amicable: they even named species after each other.
- In this sentence, there is both a first name and a last name used to identify different people. Unless one person commonly goes by their last name while the other goes by their first, you should use first or last names; not a mix of the two: “Cope and Marsh were. . . “
- Cope was known to be pugnacious and possessed a quick temper.
- “Was known to be” and “possessed” are both past-tense verbs, but one is a perfect tense (known) while the other isn’t. To make the sentence more parallel, you would change it to something like “Cope was known to be pugnacious and to possess a quick temper” or “Cope was pugnacious and possessed a quick temper.”
- Marsh was slower, more methodical, and introverted.
- The first to adjectives are comparatives, while introverted is not. A more parallel version of the sentence would read: “Marsh was slower, more methodical, and more introverted.”
- Eventually, each of the two paleontologists would resort to underhanded methods to try to out-compete the other in the field, resorting to bribery, theft, and destroying bones.
- Bribery and theft are both nouns, while destroyi