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With a brilliant imagination, a writer can make parallel structure analogous to
poetry as in the paragraph below. This paragraph is from an editorial by
Maureen Dowd in reference to an upcoming speech by President George W. Bush on
the evening of September 7, 2003. The text is from the New York Times, the
original link
here,
the full text here. First, the
paragraph; then an illustration showing the parallel structure.
| Tonight will be a stomach-churning moment
for Mr. Bush, and he must be puzzling over how he got snarled in this
nightmare, with Old Europe making him beg, North Korea making him wince, the
deficit making him cringe, the lost manufacturing jobs making him gulp; with
the hawks caving in to the U.N. and to old Saddam Baath army members who
want to rebuild a security force; with Representative David Obey demanding
the unilateral heads of Rummy and Wolfie, so that "Uncle Sam doesn't become
Uncle Sucker"; with the FBI warning that more Islamic terrorists who know
how to fly planes may be burrowing into our neighborhoods. |
The same paragraph below shows the parallel structure:
|
Tonight will be a stomach-churning moment for Mr.
Bush, and he must be puzzling over how he got snarled in this nightmare,
with
Old Europe
making him beg,
North
Korea making him wince,
the deficit
making him cringe,
the lost manufacturing jobs
making him gulp;
with
the hawks
caving in to the U.N. and to old
Saddam Baath army members who want to rebuild a security force;
with
Representative David Obey
demanding the unilateral heads of
Rummy and Wolfie, so that "Uncle Sam doesn't become Uncle Sucker";
with
the FBI
warning that more Islamic
terrorists who know how to fly planes may be burrowing into our neighborhoods.
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First of all, note that this paragraph is just one sentence that
contains 107 words! Please do NOT try writing 107 word sentences
unless you know what you are doing!
This parallel structure consists of a series of absolute
phrases. Each phrase contains a noun
or a noun phrase, a
participle, a
preposition, and other modifiers
(not highlighted). These phrases add information to the whole sentence, rather
than describing any one word. Notice that absolute phrases are always set off by
commas.
While this paragraph is one of the most brilliant examples of
parallel structure I have ever seen, and while most people could never approach
this level of sophistication, it IS possible for ESL/EFL writers to begin
to use parallel structure very effectively, even in short essays. The key
is to start where you are and look for opportunities to use parallel
structure at every level of writing.
See two examples of my own parallel structure
HERE.
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