ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos


Writing Elements and Process Videos 47 videos

What Not to do in an Introduction
32968 Views

This video offers some rules of thumb for writing a good introduction. It covers everything from tone (confidence is key!) to phrases and clichés...

What Not to do in a Conclusion
7001 Views

Even the best essays can go wrong in the conclusion—this video covers what not to do in a conclusion to help avoid any essay-ending problems. The...

Using Citations Effectively
3752 Views

You want to be as picky with your citations as Goldilocks was with her porridge—not too many, not too few... juuust right. You want to prove that...

See All

Parallel Structure 16041 Views


Share It!


Description:

This video defines parallel structure and analyzes what makes it powerful (spoiler alert: sticking to a consistent part of speech, like infinitives, gerunds, or adverbs). How do you spot parallel structure and how do you fix it if something’s not quite right?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

Thank you We sneak in parallel structure allah shmoop we

00:07

like to think that without his classic example of parallel

00:10

structure i came i saw i conquered caesar couldn't have

00:14

conquered more than a stretch of land underneath his big

00:16

toe Caesar obviously spent hours with a grammar textbook because

00:20

he apparently knew that parallel structure is powerful It forms

00:24

a list of ideas like coming seeing and conquering Usually

00:29

it will tie them together with yours anzor comments It

00:33

creates a pattern for the reader to follow so that

00:35

the ideas are easier to get and remember Basically it

00:39

just makes stuff sound awesome which is important when ruling

00:42

an empire or writing in english paper The number one

00:45

rule of parallelism is picking apart of speech for your

00:48

list and sticking to it Verbs now nhs adjectives adverbs

00:53

whatever Just don't change it up in the middle of

00:55

your list For example patrick ruined the school production of

00:59

julius caesar by saying his line incorrectly fainting into brutus

01:03

is arms and his inability to spit out another word

01:07

That sentence starts off with two verbs saying in fainting

01:11

and then ends on the noun inability a verb a

01:14

verb and then suddenly a noun No that kind of

01:17

thing will lose an audience faster than anyone can say

01:20

candy crush saga is a great game anyway since not

01:24

all parts of speech translate perfectly into other parts of

01:27

speech Some tweaking might be needed to fix the broken

01:30

parallelism but it'll sound much better like this Patrick ruined

01:34

the school production of julius caesar by saying his line

01:37

wrong fainting into brutus is arms and blanking on the

01:41

rest of the script There are two things that make

01:44

parallelism easy to spot and fix if something is out

01:47

of whack First as we've already seen every item on

01:50

the list must be the same part of speech Second

01:53

there's usually a suffolk sora helper word that appears in

01:56

every item on the list like in our sentence about

01:59

patrick all of the verbs ending in ing so let's

02:02

check out the three common types of parallelism they'll have

02:06

a suffolk sor helper word and they're all the same

02:08

part of speech First is infinitives the two blank form

02:12

of verbs like the drama teacher started to cry to

02:16

scramble for the script and to put on a toga

02:19

Himself you can take those extra too is out and

02:22

still have parallelism to cry Scramble for the script and

02:27

put on a toga But make sure that if you

02:29

stick them back in it still makes sense like there's

02:32

No such thing as too putting on a toga Then

02:35

there's jared parallelism jarod is just the i n g

02:39

form of the verb which is used as a noun

02:41

For example patrick's mom likes baking cookies leading the p

02:45

t a and pressuring her son into live theater Why

02:49

would she do that way Don't know she's Not a

02:51

good mother anyway Sometimes when infinitive tries to sneak in

02:55

make sure you keep those guys out of there And

02:58

finally there's adverb parallelism those words that end in l

03:02

y that are used to describe verb patrick's Grand parents

03:06

had bad hearing so they kept watching proudly devotedly and

03:11

lovingly If there's no elliot the end like if they

03:14

were watching proudly devotedly end with love Then there's no

03:18

parallelism keep things parallel with nice orderly lists same part

03:23

of speech same suffolk's or help her word And maybe

03:26

you two can conquer millions without threatening pillaging and murdering

03:30

And all that stuff Plus these days they have penicillin 00:03:34.578 --> [endTime] which helps

Related Videos

What is a Primary Source?
43696 Views

This video defines a primary source and what makes it different from a secondary source. What counts as original material? And where can we find th...

Wordiness
15167 Views

Want even more deets on wordiness? Click here to review. Or take a look at our entire grammar section for all the goods.

Tenses
4972 Views

Want even more deets on tenses? Click here to review. Or take a look at our entire grammar section for all the goods.

Semicolons
10243 Views

Want even more deets on semicolons? Click here to review. Or take a look at our entire grammar section for all the goods.

Ratio of Asking Questions Versus Giving Answers
718 Views

Asking questions can help spice up an essay. Just make sure you don't get too spicy and forget to answer those questions. You don't want to leave y...