42.2 Beyond Sentence Parallelism

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42.2 Beyond Sentence Parallelism

Parallel construction of sentence clusters, paragraphs, and lists is particularly important in scientific and technical writing. If you are writing a scientific report, check your early drafts for parallel construction: look at your headings, subheadings, paragraph leads, sentence patterns, and lists. Make up an outline for the paper and check the parallel construction of your headings.

You can find many examples of parallel headings on the Web site HowStuffWorks.com.
This site explains complicated processes in layman’s language, and parallel constructions contribute to the site’s clarity and accessibility. For example, Tom Harris’s article “How Earthquakes Work” lists four potential causes for earthquakes:

Volcanic eruptions
Meteor impacts
Underground explosions (an underground nuclear test, for example)
Collapsing structures (such as a collapsing mine)

Notice how each heading is made up of a plural noun and a modifier. Harris’s careful use of parallelism on this small scale reflects the larger, organizational parallelism in his article.

Michael Alley at Virginia Tech has developed an exercise for creating parallel headings and subheadings. See Exercise on Organization.

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